Improving the Chance of Getting Web Site Listed

Q. Do those tools that automatically submit your Web page address to a bunch of different search engines work well? Or should you submit your address to each search engine individually?

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A. We have not engaged in this sort of activity ourselves, but we interviewed a number of people on the topic, including some who currently work, or have worked, for search engines. The consensus: Submitting Web sites manually improves your chances of getting listed on a search engine.

And a poll released by SearchEngineWatch.com in March found that more than 80% of Web site marketers who responded to the survey believed that auto-submission is less effective than manual submission.

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Q. I am running Windows 98 Second Edition. I am unable to make new folders from the desktop or from Explorer. When I right-click on the desktop or left-click File in Explorer, I do not get a choice for New. Everything else in Windows seems to work OK. When I use “Save from programs,” I get the little Make Folder icon on the top toolbar and it works in those situations.

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A. We pronounce ourselves baffled. We’ve never heard about this bizzarro behavior before, could find no references to it in any of our standard technical tomes and got nothing but puzzled expressions from the Q&A; brain trust.

We can speak in generalities, however, based on similar types of behavior. Typically, when you can’t create something--open a new window, for example, or launch a new program--that’s a sign that your computer is out of resources, such as RAM.

A more likely suspect is corruption of the operating system. This could have occurred as a result of a virus, so scan your system with an antiviral program.

Assuming the computer is clean, the other thing we’d suggest trying is shutting down various programs running on the system on the off chance that something is interfering with the operating system.

But we suspect that you’re headed for a reinstallation of the OS using your original system discs. Don’t do this right away, though. We’re throwing the question out to readers to weigh in with suggestions and alternatives. We’ll publish anything that looks useful in two weeks.

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Dave Wilson is The Times’ personal technology columnist. Submit questions to Tech Q&A; at techtimes@latimes.com. Please be specific about your computer and operating system and include a daytime phone number.