Is Paid Inclusion Worth The Price Of Admission?

[Daria_Goetsch]

Is Paid Inclusion worth the price of admission?

What are the positives and negatives you see associated with Paid Inclusion programs? Now that the ownership of the major search engines has narrowed, is there a good payoff for Paid Inclusion services?

[David Wallace]

I don't think paid inclusion is worthwhile unless you have pages you want indexed that will not be crawled automatically. Other than that, I think the two major search engines that do offer PFI - Yahoo and Teoma, do a pretty good job of crawling the web on their own. Teoma is a bit slower at picking up new content but will still eventually get it.

[Daria_Goetsch]

Right. Patience for indexing those pages for free.

One of the problems I see with Paid Inclusion is small businesses who cannot afford even Paid Inclusion, much less PPC programs, to index their pages. Somehow I wish there were some considerations for businesses who can't afford the same pricing as large businesses.

[Robert_Charlton]

I think a lot of people confuse inclusion with ranking.

Both Teoma and Yahoo look at inbound links in their algos, particularly for more competitive terms. It's my feeling that you can pay to be included, but if these engines can't find you, you're not going to rank well anyway and there's no point in paying. If they can find you, you'll get in for free if you wait.

The question is, how long will it take? The PFI business model (which really should be called Pay For Freshness) is kind of schizzy at its core, and if an engine includes you too quickly, there's no point in anybody's paying. Teoma takes a long time to include new sites... in my opinion, disgracefully long.

Yahoo appears to be doing a reasonably decent job, but it's still slower than pre-sandbox Google. If you're in it for the long term, and you're doing your job anyway and getting inbound links for your sites, you might choose to wait. I've advised all my clients to wait, and we've never been disappointed.

On the other hand, if you're in a rapidly changing retail environment where, say, prompt seasonal listings are important, you might determine that PFF/PFI is a good investment, even with Yahoo's PPC surcharge added.

I'd think very hard, though, before investing in paid inclusion on Teoma. There just doesn't seem to be enough traffic from that engine to justify it.

[Daria_Goetsch]

Interesting article on the future of paid inclusion:

ZDNet
Search engines rethink paid inclusion
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5245825.html