Dolemite - 12:43 am on Mar 21, 2003 (gmt 0)

If search engines only accepted PFI listings, their indexes would be incredibly small, and miss out lots of crucial pages. They can't exclude high quality sites without losing credibility and searchers.

Clearly free listings need to be included for quality search results. Inktomi found that out and and responded appropriately with aggressive spidering of non-PFI pages. They realized their existence depended more on the user experience than lining their pockets with every listing.

IMO, they also need to realize that they depend on the client experience as well, and not penalize for PFI...perhaps even (*gasp*) give some SERP advantage for PFI. If it worked as advertised, I don't think PFI would be too terribly overpriced. With its unfortunate side effects, its long term cost may be far greater, though.

I have also been giving this quite a lot of thinking lately. Using PFI might send up the red flags and put an end to my already pretty good free lisings.

I say don't risk it.