"According to several search engine marketing executives, Yahoo has been considering doing away with the per-click fees on the grounds that many small and medium-size businesses have balked at the traffic tolls."

http://news.com.com/Search+engines+rethink+paid+inclusion/2100-1024_3-5245825.html?tag=cd.top

Congrats to Dana Todd to getting quoted in this article.

Figured I add what I wrote here (http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/000590.html) in this thread to get things moving a bit.

I did not know many people who truly liked the pricing structure of Yahoo/Overture's SiteMatch program. A pay for inclusion and pay per click fee just did not like it would take off. The program was first announced back in March at the NYC SES conference where people at the Paid Inclusion & Trusted Feeds erupted in the room. Then to ease people's worries, Tim from Yahoo began answering questions in the WebmasterWorld Forum. Unfortunately, Tim is just one man, constant complains about Yahoo!'s poor customer service was spreading at the forums.

So now we see that Yahoo is one of the search engines that are rethinking their price structure. Ask Jeeves just announced (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/forum/showthread.php?t=313) something similar a few days ago.

It makes more sense, to me at least, not to charge a PPC fee as well as a listing fee.

Good find!

According to several search engine marketing executives, Yahoo has been considering doing away with the per-click fees on the grounds that many small and medium-size businesses have balked at the traffic tolls...A Yahoo representative said only that the company has not made any changes to its paid-inclusion program.

I think the article is rather misleading. From reading the article, I'm gathering that the SEM industry is pushing to do away with the CPC factor to pay-inclusion. Ask Jeeves may be "rethinking" their position on paid inclusion; however, Yahoo is apparently sticking to their guns, at least for now.

When Yahoo released their new search engine in February of this year, I was among many people that were thrilled with how it worked, the fact that Google now had some legitimate competition, the results were relevant, etc.,

Then they announced their PFI/PPC program and IMO gave up their opportunity to beat Google. I couldn't believe that a company that looked as though they were going to give Google a run for their money would do something so stupid. Aren't they making enough money with their Overture unit?

Therefore I think they should rethink their strategy. They have a good search engine but as long as they allow money to have any affect on the organic listings or at least allow people to have the impression that it does, they will never be able to compete along the same lines as Google. That’s is my opinion on it anyway.

Could we see the return of "free inclusion"? I certainly hope so!

I've always liked the PFI model but the PFI/PPC model was absolutely wrong. I stopped renewing any PFI campaign, and at this point would welcome the death of PFI. If content is relevant then the SEs should index it.

I work with many small and medium-size businesses and it definintely takes a toll on them.

The Yahoo! business model certainly needs to include "income" to stay a business! But, a negative result of hitting small business' with too much could be the loss to the Web of some excellent information and services because only the large companies could afford to compete.

On thing that has helped the Web grow to the point of being ubiquitous in the culture, is that it's a place to find information and services you didn't know existed since only larger corporations can compete in the other larger marketing and advertising mediums.

The small town going global has been good for Yahoo!. Small businesses getting in the Yahoo! Directory has benefited Yahoo! financially and is something any business can afford.

I've always loved the (Inktomi) pay for inclusion, it gave a beautiful jump-start to new sites. I recommended it without hesitation. But with the PPC element added, I wouldn't dream of it.

Added:
Actually I'm very glad to hear they're reconsidering, and hope they go back to the old model. At least for individual pages for the sake of smaller sites, which is what I primarily deal with. Yahoo is (and Ink was) far easier to work with and do nicely without all the neurotic link-chasing it takes for Google.

With all these responses in favor of PFI, I thought I'd add my comments to balance things a bit. :)

If my understanding of PFI is correct, then I feel it's equivalent to paying to cut in line. It's like when you go to Disneyworld and pay to get in the "express" line and bypass all those "other" people. Just because people are willing to put up money to do this, doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.

I'm all for getting ahead of my competition, but it's the way to get ahead that concerns me. And while disclosing which sites are paid and not paid slightly eases the pain of PFI for me, users still have to contend sifting through all those links, and to me that's just clutter.

It's like diet fads: some people will always be looking for that magic pill that'll make them look good without having to do all the work. Not exactly something to be proud of, IMO.

If my understanding of PFI is correct, then I feel it's equivalent to paying to cut in line. It's like when you go to Disneyworld and pay to get in the "express" line and bypass all those "other" people. Just because people are willing to put up money to do this, doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.
That is not how PFI works ... at least that is not how it is supposed to work. Yahoo claims that paid inclusion listing receive no boost. Because they are not 'tagged' we have to take their word for it. However, I feel they are probably telling the truth. We do quite well in Yahoo and have never paid a dime yet for inclusion.

That is not how PFI works ... at least that is not how it is supposed to work. Yahoo claims that paid inclusion listing receive no boost.

Hmmm, well that begs the question, "what's the attraction then?" :confused: If it doesn't guarantee you a position in the serps, then why bother? So if a customer who either hasn't shown up in the results or was very low to begin with signs up for PFI and they get no boost, it would appear they're only paying Yahoo for the right to pay them more.

I read Danny Sullivan's article (http://searchenginewatch.com/_subscribers/articles/article.php/3369631) the other day on how to intrepret the URLs in the serps to determine which are paid and which are not. In his example, the paid-for's were scattered on the first page, so at least they're not taking over the top spots. ;)

Hmmm, well that begs the question, "what's the attraction then?" :confused: If it doesn't guarantee you a position in the serps, then why bother? So if a customer who either hasn't shown up in the results or was very low to begin with signs up for PFI and they get no boost, it would appear they're only paying Yahoo for the right to pay them more.

I read Danny Sullivan's article (http://searchenginewatch.com/_subscribers/articles/article.php/3369631) the other day on how to intrepret the URLs in the serps to determine which are paid and which are not. In his example, the paid-for's were scattered on the first page, so at least they're not taking over the top spots. ;)
The prupose is to get the pages looked at quickly and integrated into the search results... if they are not optimzied at all and you are just throwing them in... then PFI is a waste.
And yes as Danny's info shows they are spread through various pages... there is no guarantee for placement... but once you have it and you stop paying off it goes...
so there is a catch.

. Ask Jeeves may be "rethinking" their position on paid inclusion; however....

Ask Jeeves are not "rethinking" about per URL PFI. As of September 30th 2004, they will no longer accept any submissions to this program.

This was announced in the Ask Jeeves forum on Monday this week, and has since been reported widely in the press.

The prupose is to get the pages looked at quickly and integrated into the search results... if they are not optimzied at all and you are just throwing them in... then PFI is a waste.


PFI does provide a number of benefits:
1) Rapid Inclusion - somewhere between 2 days to 7 days.
2) Guaranteed inclusion for the lenght of your subscription period - normally 12 months.
3) Rapid refresh - respidering every 2 days to 7 days depending on engine
4) Access to click thru reporting.

So if you have the time and skill, you can optimize, take advantage of the rapid refresh and boost your ranking that way. So whilst not a direct increase in ranking, it does provide you with the ability to get your site higher (obviously adjusting on page factors only).

I have seen, on many instances, the business case/ROI calculation work based solely on getting the URL into the index quickly rather than waiting. If you want the traffic now, than paying for it isn't such a bad strategy.

but once you have it and you stop paying off it goes...so there is a catch.

With OSM, once you stop paying you return to the status you had prior to paying. Your ranking may of changed in that time, becuase the index grows in size or the algorithm may of changed.

So if you were included prior to OSM, then you will be included post OSM.

Hope that helps.

With OSM, once you stop paying you return to the status you had prior to paying. Your ranking may of changed in that time, becuase the index grows in size or the algorithm may of changed.

So if you were included prior to OSM, then you will be included post OSM.

Hope that helps.
Yes and if you had no placement for any keywords you go back to zero and those pages are not reexamined in 2 days and then float back to where they were... they have a do not touch label.... you are actually better off using alternate named pages with the similar (but not mirrored) content to be the replacement pages... in this case do not do any redirects but have the pages indexed and competiting for similar keywords... then tweak those to get the extra space left behind by the dropped pages.

Who is a reseller of PFI? I am blowing out a new site and figured I would give them a try.... so there has to be a mod or someone here with an affiliate link to these... may as well share the wealth so give me some links... any and all PFI programs will be considered.

Hello AussieWebmaster,

ww.trellian.com (http://www.trellian.com/) is a PFI reseller/distributor that offers other SEO and SEM firms reseller discounts on all the major PFI programs including Overture Site Match. A link to the direct PFI site please go to: www.prioritysubmit.com (http://www.prioritysubmit.com/)

Cheers
David

have been told good stuff about (but have not personally used)
http://positiontech.com/

Directly from the press released located at http://docs.yahoo.com/docs/pr/release1144.html

Site Match will be available directly from Overture and through resellers including Position Technologies, Marketleap, ineedhits, Trellian, Network Solutions and infoSpider

Cheers

Warren

A little summary as to the listed PFI resellers:

Direct Overture Site Match PFI resellers include:

Ineedhits
InfoSpider
Marketleap
Position Technologies
Trellian - PrioritySubmit.com

(network solutions is not a direct reseller)


Of the above list of Overture Site Match resellers Ineedhits and Trellian also cover the whatUseek PFI program.

Trellian also covers 40 other Search Engines, including: Scrubtheweb, Entireweb, Yahoo Europe Directories, many regional Dutch, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese etc.. Search Engines.

Cheers
David

It's been a few weeks, but I'm still anxiously awaiting some news whether there will be any changes or not.

The old PFI program was such an exellent opportunity for some people, whose potential ROI and margin simply don't warrant PFI with a PPC model attached.

The change was a tremendous blow to small time business people with sites that are expectedly fairly low revenue by nature. The old program served as an instrument of democratization in marketing, affording the little guy a chance to get out there and compete with the big outfits - fairly.

That opportunity was lost to a multitude of middle-class small entrepreneurs, with the blending of the PPC and PFI models. It could also represent a loss to surfers, when quality of merchandise that can be found, in the case of some niches, is sacrificed to mass-produced crap in the name of profits and bigger capitalization.

I really hope that Yahoo's financial return amply justifies what amounts to the destruction of opportunity for a multitude of small, middle-class webpreneurs, and the potential loss of quality and choice to shoppers as well.

i have recently heard that some changes will happen soon, and it sounds like we will see the blend of the opportunities your looknig for, making it far more reasonable for small & larger advertisers.

From what I understand the big fear is that when the subscription expires, if not renewed the pages will sink into oblivion and not be picked up again. I didn't experience that with the old Ink PFI. The pages dropped out and then came back with the same rankings as before through regular non-paid crawls.

I don't know if it's the same now with Yahoo's scheme; all I do know is that if there wasn't PPC attached to it I'd submit several of my own pages right now and be suggesting it to others (including clients) as well. With the current system I wouldn't think of it for my pages, I'll just hope that they get included or updated in the index for the Holiday season.