Are all the partners gonna stand for this?

..whats in the future of the likes of msn, aol, hotbot, etc?

[Smokin Joe]

Is it just me? OR does anyone else not think that all of the Ink partners will put up with this?

[Rockintom]

I used to think that, but I think I'm getting a little skeptical in my old age. Lycos and Excite have been doing an awfull lot of network tv advertisng over the last few months in an attempt to get more people to use their services.
Who has been among the slowest to update their databases? Makes me wonder if they really care what kind of info they serve up as long as they're the one serving it.
So to answer your question, I hope you're right, but I wouldn't bet the house on it. :(

[Smokin Joe]

I understand the business side of the whole situation and granted they all probably knew about it ahead of time, but don't they realize the distinct advantage of "free"?

Perhaps this is why Yahoo! dropped out. But if it were, I'm sure other would have also?

Any comments? Suggestions? Predictions?

OH I tried to edit last post, but it said I have the wrong password.

[rcjordan]

>Predictions?
Get accustomed to it Joe.

[Rockintom]

I think I mis-understood your original question - I thought you were refering to the Ink June27th shake up as opposed to the new "pay per view" deal.
Be that as it may, my responce may still be appropriate. If Hotbot, MSN and the rest of them don't give a hoot about the freshness or relevance of what they deliver, you can bet they don't care about pay or free.
I think the idea stinks, myself, but again, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the Ink partners to rally around the cause.

[rcjordan]

>Perhaps this is why Yahoo! dropped out

I posted an article in here somewhere that said Yahoo only accounted for 2 percent of INK's income --I was shocked at that low number. BUT, I think it answers part of your question. If Yahoo only accounts for 2%, then all the rest of the partners combined probably account for another 2 or 3 percentage points --hardly worth changing your business plan to accommodate them.

[squeezeplay]

While I don't have the numbers handy (I 'll try to find them eventually), I believe that the SE business actually represents a relatively small (less than 10%????)percentage of their total revenue stream. They have quietly become a major force in the Software used to run large ISPs and intranets. I'll find the article and post the link as soon as possible.

[roscoepico]

This may be the article you're refering to. Saw it in last months issue....only 30%....
[thestandard.com...]

"Powering Internet search, once the mainstay of Inktomi's business, now makes up only 30 percent of the company's revenue. And while revenues from its search business are still growing 136 percent annually, the rest of Inktomi's business, network applications, is 265 percent larger than a year ago. Peterschmidt expects that business to have a 300 percent compound annual growth rate by the end of the year."

[Michael Martinez]

Maybe there have been some internal changes which shift the burden of profitability onto a search engine services cost center that didn't exist before. Paid listings won't improve the quality of a Web index. While you're getting rid of spammers, you're also getting rid of the vast majority of Webmasters who can't afford to pay for the listings (and most of them don't even know how to submit their sites or prep them for indexing anyway).

The success or failure of the paid listings business plans will take a year or more to show up. Surfers will make the final decision. If they are satisfied with the results they get they'll become loyal to whichever services hook them.

[Brett_Tabke]

There has been a massive reduction in the number of searches performed via ink. From what I've heard, Ink was being paid on a 1 cent per search average. That has changed radically:

- yahoo no more.
- Hotbot gets some results straight from direct hit.
- Iwon now getting some from ask jeeves and reducing hits to ink.
- Msn getting most from itself, direct hit, various directories and reducing hits to ink.
- anzwers now focusing solely on .au domains - same with canada.com and .ca.
- AOL now pulling from goto and the ink slide will continue.
- meta search engines now being paid to run other search engines results. (from goto, find what, looksmart). No major ink outlet at major metacrawlers (again, exposure reduction).

Where is there a major search engine that is using pure Ink results? There isn't one that I can see left.

Aol and Iwon would be the closest, but AOL is going to Goto and I'm sure ink's cut will decrease by atleast 75% there - Iwon is pulling more and more from ask jeeves - they'll continue to do that since ask jeeves is paying them according to some reports I've read.

Ink has taken it in on the chin this year. I've tried to find the numbers from their own data, but all we can do is give it a best guess: I'd guess the number of searches performed via ink this year is off 90% from its high in January.

With all that, I'm sure Ink is shopping itself at a much cheaper rate than it used to (I've heard 10 searches to the penny or less)

Pay for spidering? No guarantee return? Not me at this time.

[Michael Martinez]

Both Canada.Com and Anzwers are still returning my sites and many other American science fiction and fantasy sites in their results. At least, they were as of yesterday when I last checked them for various things. Perhaps they are scaling back on commercial listings outside their respective geographical regions, but I haven't found any indication of this. Neither have I actually tried to determine if they were scaling back. I just know what I have seen come up in my searches.

[zero6]

Hi, I've been following the Inktomi situation pretty closely over the last month or two and I am getting the impression that the people at the top at Ink. are placing a lot less importance on powering internet search now as they continue to expand the network applications side of their business. It seems they are getting a lot of revenue from this ie: cache storage/servers for broadband network companies, which suggests they are obviously looking towards the future of internet

Bearing in mind most of the major SE's partnered with Ink. are locked into long term contracts, I think we are stuck with the results from Ink. as they are right now for a while. I dont think the top brass at Ink. are too bothered about not delivering the freshest results while MSN, AOL, GoTo, HotBot, etc are continuing to forge links with each other and parnerships with various others such as LookSmart and Direct Hit.

I suspect that the SE's will be demanding that Ink. either start delivering fresher results soon or they won't be renewing their contract next time round, I suspect the latter will happen anyway. re: Yahoo.

Looks very much to me like getting into Inktomi's core DB is going to be less useful to us in the future anyway.