amznVibe - 6:46 am on Oct 6, 2003 (gmt 0)

What would seemingly be yet-another story for the more mainstream about paid inclusion - but check out the story at the end about the guy who declined on Inktomi's offer and found himself all but removed from the listings...

Business Week Online - Web Searches: The Fix Is In [businessweek.com]

After he demanded to know what happened, Spooner learned from Inktomi that his site contained editorial flaws that hurt his ranking. And he would have to become a paid-inclusion customer to learn what these flaws were. All this, while his pages remained well ranked on Google. "I lost a quarter of my traffic," says Spooner.