Is ask/teoma giving preference to paid listings.

Is the butler taking bribes.

[lgn]

I never paid to be listed in teoma/ask jeaves and we were listed in position 1 or 2 for our major keywords for years.

All the sudden we are on page six and the top pages features sites like (a very big company), and other major marketeers with more money than brains, when it comes to operating a web based business.

It appears to me that the butler is now taking bribes, when it comes to non-sponsored listings.

[edited by: caine at 8:30 am (utc) on Aug. 12, 2003]
[edit reason] Specific use of a company name [/edit]

[caine]

Probably more a victim of an algo change interspersed with some major expenditure by some big companies, who you may think know nothing about site optimization, but when your site is that big, what exactly do they need to know -> spending money counts alot

[mr_tim]

In my experience it seems when i pay for inclusion a good serp is given, then dropped a few pages down a couple of weeks later. Then you pay again and up you go...

[kevinpate]

Although it's not a primary traffic source for us (or anyone from what I can garner), the nfp site I'm responsible for has sat well in the serps with the butler and his sister (teoma) for near on 18 months without a paid listing. As its a labor of love with no PFI budget, we're more than happy and hope that continues for some time.

[hazardtomyself]

I just did a search for a term I normally track and Ask Jeeves returned 10 "Sponsored Listings" before the real web results. I don't know...Desperate for cash? Search engines should figure IT out. Google is popular because they are delivering what the people want. These engines should be trying to figure out how to do that if they want people to search them. If you ask me, 10 sponsored listing in front of the real listings is overboard. Who wants to see all those. Get a clue Jeeves.

[martinibuster]

Get a clue Jeeves.

They have more than a clue. Those sponsored listings are Google AdWords.

However, the topic here is not about sponsored listings but about Paid Inclusion and whether or not there's an advantage.

Paul Gardi, SVP of Search for Ask Jeeves has consistently stated that there is no algorithmic advantage for PFI sites. The benefit of PFI is freshness. The advantage to freshness is that it allows you to fine tune your on-page data to see if it helps your ranking. :)

On the downside, Ask Jeeves' algo takes into account what link neighborhoods you are in, so PFI won't help you there. :(

Irrelevant links can hurt your rankings. On topic links, both inbound and out should help.

Another thing that may account for your slip in the rankings is that Ask Jeeves has dramatically increased the size of it's database from 350 million pages to 1.5 billion pages.

Please review this disucussion [webmasterworld.com] about Paul Gardi's assertion that their English language index is roughly equal to Google's.

Ask Jeeves has an important demographic that cannot be ignored by certain industries.

[rfgdxm1]

>Ask Jeeves has an important demographic that cannot be ignored by certain industries.

What is that demographic?

[martinibuster]

What is that demographic?

Women, 30 and up.

[rfgdxm1]

>Women, 30 and up.

How is ask.com targeting them? Only way I can see doing so effectively would be to advertise in media that this demographic is attracted to.

[martinibuster]

Good question. To my knowledge, they aren't really targeting women. A few months back they hyped their renewed $10 million advertising campaign, but where did that go? Did they really spend the money? (yes, 10 million won't get you far) Or did they hitch a ride on the press release bandwagon?

But then, I don't read women's media.

Women are the demographic often cited in regard to Ask Jeeves, a fact which probably originated with them. I have heard Paul Gardi repeat this statistic on three different occasions. I have to say that traffic from Jeeves to one of my more female oriented sites is pretty decent. But it's a new site and I'm looking forward to seeing if their demographic responds.