Success with Yahoo Paid Inclusion

[AussieWebmaster]

I am being sold the Yahoo PFI program from the people at Yahoo and would like opinions from those using it or not.
As in: "PI will help get your pages looked at, associate new URLs with appropriate search queries and hopefully convert more traffic to the site"

The first part I have problems with... but I am thinking that since they allow you to rewrite the titles and descriptions that may have some impact - though this could be done without the PFI.

Anyone have any experience with this feed submit?

[jempp]

Hey there,

I'm considering a PI in Yahoo! too.. Just wondering how beneficial it will be for me :)

Jeremy

[AussieWebmaster]

Guess we just have to wait for some input.

[qcguide]

I'm considering a PI in Yahoo! too.. Just wondering how beneficial it will be for me :)
Hello, Jeremy. FWIT, the only time I would even consider it would be if I absolutely needed certain pages indexed on a schedule. You have to pay for every Yahoo SERP click for the included pages.

[AussieWebmaster]

Hello, Jeremy. FWIT, the only time I would even consider it would be if I absolutely needed certain pages indexed on a schedule. You have to pay for every Yahoo SERP click for the included pages.considering some of terms could be worth a lot more than the 15 or 30 cents a click... just getting them is a plus....

[spamfork]

We use Y! paid inclusion and love it. The market for most terms is slightly less crowed over at Yahoo and the traffic converts as well and sometimes better than organic XXXX, or even AdWords or Y! Sponsored. Go for it is my advice.

[128hotkaties]

Yahoo "search submit express" requires that I create an xml feed for my urls. How do I make an XML feed for my urls ? Do I just make a feed with a list of links in it ?

[YahooSarah]

Hi 128Hotkaties,

Yahoo! offers two products that allow you to submit Web pages and content to our algorithmic search index, Search Submit Express and Search Submit Pro. If you've signed up for Search Submit Express, all you have to do is enter the URLs you'd like to submit through the signup page on our site. If you've signed up for Search Submit Pro (which offers more control as well as customized, in-depth reporting), then you should build a feed offline with help from a Yahoo! account team or a third-party reseller of your choice.

I hope this is helpful. If you continue to have difficulty, please feel free to stickymail me with your email address and I'll make sure our Search Submit team reviews it.

YahooSarah

[trellian]

Hi 128hotkaties,

If you need assistance we are one of only 4 Yahoo! Search Submit Express partners and would be happy to help. PM me or visit:
http://www.prioritysubmit.com/

Cheers
David Warmuz

[Discovery]

We used a placement agency who modified a couple or our pages and submitted to Y! We were indexed and ranked #1-3 for our most valuable keywords within 2 days. We paid all of $250 for this service.

Are these guys doing something that violates Y! policy? We dont know, but it has been almost a year and have never had a negative consequence. Realistically, Y! can't even respond to our requests for fraud/training/general help when we spend close to a half mill a year there, so I highly doubt they have control over these types of services.

The results from these clicks are lack luster, converting far below our PPC campaigns, however since the cost was only $250 the ROI is very satisfying.

PS: Why does this Paid Inclusion have to have a different control panel?

[AussieWebmaster]

I still remember when they first rolled this out and I had to be referred to Position Tech to explain it to me.

[trellian]

PS: Why does this Paid Inclusion have to have a different control panel?

Search Submit is a totally different paid inclusion program, you do not have control over keywords as you do with the PPC program.

That for a URL that is in Search Submit Express, the only way not to pay for traffic to your site for a particular keyword is to remove that keyword from your page. This tends to be detrimental especially if that same keyword has good rankings on google and generated good organic "FREE" traffic for you.

That is one of the main reasons why the control panels are kept very much separate.

Cheers
David

[Discovery]

Thanks David,

I understand what you mean. However, regardless of the differences in the products, I am still one customer using a few services from one company. It just makes more sense to me to have one login and then click on the appropriate tab to get to the service/campaign I want to manage. It's a minor issue, but having two accounts and two logins is bothersome.

What if you use their marketing console? Then you have a third login and search optimizer a fourth? Are they going to have a different login for every service they offer? As you scale this model is makes less sense.

Discovery

[Nacho]

The one thing that I'm most confused about is that when PFI came out many top Yahoo! voices said very clearly that 99% of the web is crawled for free and all urls from paid inclusion did NOT receive any ranking benefits.

Today, it's called "Search Submit" and last week I spoke with a Yahoo! Account Manager which clearly said "it will boost natural rankings".

Seriously, if Yahoo! wants to give a big boost to pages given through their paid inclusion program called "Search Submit" because they are delivered through a trusted feed which that in itself has *so much* weight in the algo, then that's totally fine by me. They should just sell it as such, rather than confuse all clients about this ranking boost or no boost.

Hey, Search Submit is a great product for a specific profile of clients! Just, please be honest... and please be clear about how you sell your products, Yahoo! You will most likely see more demand for it by doing so.

[Robert_Charlton]

The one thing that I'm most confused about is that when PFI came out many top Yahoo! voices said very clearly that 99% of the web is crawled for free and all urls from paid inclusion did NOT receive any ranking benefits.

Today, it's called "Search Submit" and last week I spoke with a Yahoo! Account Manager which clearly said "it will boost natural rankings".

If what the Account Manager said is true, I'm very confused as well. I remember when the program was announced that there were some fairly heated discussions over in the WebmasterWorld Supporters Forum about whether there was in fact a rankings boost; and Yahoo came out and clarified that there was not any direct ranking benefit. Where they hedged, though, was on the subject of how much free coaching they supplied to people who used the program. I alluded to that in this recent thread here...

The Effects of Paid Inclusion on Natural traffic
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?p=58096#post58096

...In the original incarnation of the program, there was some hedging about whether the process of getting your site "in compliance with content quality guidelines" in fact carried with it a bit of free SEO coaching.

The current Search Submit material (http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/srchsb/sse_hiw.php) makes it clear that there isn't any coaching, at least not by Yahoo, and that the guidance won't be free....


The Search Submit program does not include web site consulting services. If you are unsure whether your site complies with the Content Quality Guidelines or if you would like further guidance on how to improve the pages you want to submit to Search Submit, we urge you to work with one of the following authorized Search Submit resellers....

Am not sure whether we're all talking about exactly the same program, but I know that the same principle should extend throughout, or else the FTC would want to know about it. The current Yahoo online material also suggests that there isn't any ranking benefit.

[Nacho]

If what the Account Manager said is true, I'm very confused as well.Let me just make clear that what this account manager said could be one among a few isolated events.

It just seems there’s still lots of confusion (http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050706-153040) since the launching of this program, but yet not as much education has been provided by Yahoo! on Search Submit to both webmasters, marketers, website owners or its own sales people.

We have heard confusion from our own clients on this image (http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/srchsb/sse.php):

http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/imgs/as/sssrchsb.gif

Where, it seems that listings could be appearing within the #1, #2 or #3 positions, since that is what is visible on the snapshot.

Seriously … if there is absolutely nothing to gain (no freshness factor boost, no trusted feed boost, etc.) except being on the index, then wouldn’t the client think it would make it a relatively unattractive product to buy into (unless they have serious crawling issues)? On the contrary, if there is a clear algorithmic boost from the freshness factor, trusted feeds or others, then perhaps Yahoo! should just sell it as such, I’m positive they would get a lot more buyers into the “Search Submit” program. However, there are still some very delicate topics with the FTC on this that they must deal with.

I find *education needed* on Yahoo!'s Paid Inclusion programs to be the main topic here and release all confusion.

[projectphp]

<added>: OK, wrong words :) They are now
* Search Submit Express and
* Search Submit Pro

Express is the old URL inclusion stuff, Pro the XML feed trusted feed.</added>

I find *education needed* on Yahoo!'s Paid Inclusion programs to be the main topic here and release all confusion.
OK, so what are we talking about here? SiteMatch or the Trusted feed version? We need to be careful to seperate the two out.

The benefits of the trusted feed version are massive, and readily apparent to any cloaker: Complete SERP control (you right your own descriptions and titles), and a disconnect between the content used for ranking and the content a user is delivered to (for example you can send users to an iPod cat page from a specific model, which may prove to have better ROI). It is also close to SEO, in so far as you can fiddle with the fields on offer to rank better, and many SEO "tricks" carry over.

You also get to feed content in as it comes, making it ideal for classified, real estate and job sites, most of which rarely have their specific content indexed.

The only problem is it is CPC, so if you have "bad" content, for example you mention a high volume search as part of your feed, it can blow out fairly quickly by accident.

There was also talk, once upon a time, about the "trusted" nature of the feed leading to an editorial "tick". No idea if that is true, but it was at one point discussed.

Ranking boost or not, the trusted feed is certainly useful for some sites, especially for anyone who has wrestled with the political beast that is a big company website. Whether the CPC is better than not paying anything and continuing to recieve a lower level of Organic clicks for free is a question that can only be answered by testing.

Now the other version, the SiteMatch that replaced the old Inktomi URL thingy is worth very little and not very much, IMHO. There was some talk that it can work as a review mechanism for banned sites, but having never tested that myself, I can neither confirm nor deny that.

[trellian]

Now the other version, the SiteMatch that replaced the old Inktomi URL thingy is worth very little and not very much, IMHO. There was some talk that it can work as a review mechanism for banned sites, but having never tested that myself, I can neither confirm nor deny that
OK
Yahoo Search Submit Express (aka Overture Site Match and Inktomi Search Submit)
As one of the 4 partners offering this program .... This program does NOT give any ranking boosts. I wish it did, it would make selling this program much easier :)

Here are the main benefits of this program:
- fast inclusion - great if you need a particular page indexed fast
- click reporting - access to keyword and average rank reports (granted you can get keywords from your log files, but handy to have average rank)
- 48 hour updates/refresh - now this is probably the best feature as if you are performing SEO on the page, any changes/tweaks made are re-indexed within 48 hours so that you can faster see the results of your SEO work.
Simply, SEO work with Search Submit is fast tracked. (That is, the part that can be.)
- plus good for dynamic sites that have trouble getting crawled organically.

Cheers

David

[Robert_Charlton]

We have heard confusion from our own clients on this image:

Nacho - One of the reasons the discussion over a WmW was as heated as it was at the time Search Submit was announced is that the message on that page was downright deceptive... I don't know how else to put it. Experienced webmasters couldn't figure out what it was saying, and for good reason. It was intended to trick people into paying for submission and to think that would get them rankings.

The only advantage, though, is freshness. IMO, Yahoo is the slowest of the three major engines to find new content on established sites, and I've long felt that there's a direct connection between this slowness and Search Submit. If the index is really fresh, who's going to pay?

The benefits of the trusted feed version are massive...

I didn't think that Inktomi or Yahoo actually manipulated their results to favor their PFI customers. Clearly there was or is some coaching. But on an algo like Google's, eg, I don't think that coaching on filling in the fields would suffice. I've often wondered, though, whether the algos on PFI engines might in some way favor optimization via feed type data, which might explain why Yahoo and Ink were so generous to onpage factors on deep pages.

This is pure speculation, of course, but there's an inherent conflict of interest in the PFI model which prompts this kind of thinking.

[Nacho]

It was intended to trick people into paying for submission and to think that would get them rankings.I don't think it was "intended to trick people into paying for submission", but rather lack of educating people on its benefits.

[projectphp]

If the index is really fresh, who's going to pay?
Anyone witha site that changes frequently. How long is a job live? A real estate listing? A classified ad? Most content that needs constant updating will never be found on any engine. No engine will find all the job posts that last less than 48 hours, and that is quite a few.

I didn't think that Inktomi or Yahoo actually manipulated their results to favor their PFI customers.
The confusion there lies in the notion that they need to do anything additional. If you could write titles, descriptions and submit the exact content you wanted straight into an engine, wouldn't that rank better than copy written for mixed goals?


... but rather lack of educating people on its benefits.
Which, for the non trusted feed version, are...?? I really can't think of many.

The problem with the non-trusted feed version is that its appeal is so very limitted. The problems are:
- limitted to submitted URLs (that excludes new content from consideration).
- URLs that are indexed need to change significantly enough to justify expense.
- URLs indexed will not have links followed and indexed (as the PFI bot is seperate).

No offence to anyone that sells the program, but what use is regular updates of content that doesn't change? Or updates of content that changes minimally that won't lead to further content being discovered? That is not nearly as useful, nor is it the same, as finding new content.

The only pages I could think of that would benefit from thsi program would be category pages of products for a site with frequently changing inventory, e.g. eBay cats where the product range is different day to day (say antiquettes) or auction clearance houses. These have content that changes, and these changes make tangible differences to watch a searcher will receive (Beryl, looking for a specific antiqutte rocking horse from her childhood, won't be interested in the plates now on offer).

Unfortunately, most changing content doesn't change much, and 99.9% of new content gets a "fresh" URL, so the URLs for which this program is relevant are frighteningly small.

All that said, I would actually like to hear some examples of pages for which this program is ideal from people that recommend it.

[danielanaidu]

No one has mentioned the per click cost associated with Search Submit Express. Don't you have to pay $0.15 per click for one whole year every time someone clicks on the one of your pages in the natural search results? Is that really worth it?

[Nacho]

Is that really worth it?
It really depends on which category of product/services you have. For example $0.15 for a $5,000 watch is not a problem, but $0.15 for a $0.99 can of beans doesn't make sense.

Who ever came up with these two prices ($0.15 / $0.30) was probably not thinking about the different ROI levels that exist among the millions of products and services across multiple markets. I like the bidding model better, which was well thought out when launched back in the days at $0.01 and adjust upward from there based on competitive demand for those top spots.

[trellian]

Who ever came up with these two prices ($0.15 / $0.30) was probably not thinking about the different ROI levels that exist among the millions of products and services across multiple markets

I totally agree with you on this point...
From recollection the reason these pricing points were established was because of the former Inktomi Index Connect Trusted Feed rates.

Which varied from $0.11 to $1.00
Not having the same rate card for this program would have scared away most customers... just far too complicated... so this was simplified "somewhat" to a 2 tied CPC rate card.

Just to let you know, I believe that none of the original Inktomi Search Submit resellers were too keen on the CPC part, we liked the program the way it was, nice and easy.

Cheers
David

[AdamS]

Hi,

I've used PI on Yahoo for many years with good success. However all optimization efforts, even that by a third party, only drove a little more volume.

And yes, all of the benefits of PI that are explained in this forum are spot on.

Here's the kicker. So I stopped running on PI as a TEST, and noticed that I picked up most of the revenue in NATURAL SEARCH. I think it is important for this program to factor in the revenue UPSIDE from natural search when determining ROAS:

(Revenue from PI - Potential Revenue from Nat Search) / Cost of Ad spend....

This will show you the incrementality of the revenue as it pertains to the cost to acquire that incremental revenue. Obviously, it was an easy decision to terminate PI.

Hope this helps.

Adam