Ink pay to list?

[NFFC]

guaranteed placement in the Inktomi search database.
[newsbytes.com]

[gil]

Too bad we can't boycott the S.O.B.'s if that pay for a listing program is going to exclude submissions elsewhere.

On the other hand if the price is reasonable and it truly guarantees decent indexing and placement it might not be too onerous. This is probably the route all of the free services will take in the future. No free lunches (most of the time, anyway)

;<
gil

[JamesR]

No ranking boosts, just a guarantee into the index. Wonder when the others will follow suit.

[gil]

When you are one or 100 pages out of a BILLION or so it isn't going to make much difference if you can't get consistent positioning and indexing.

Has anyone heard any other news on IKK. Have they stopped accepting new submissions thru the usual sources?

Good luck

Gil

[littleman]

The end result of this -> SEOs dominating the index even more.

Not good for the littleguys.

[stcrim]

worth keeping an eye on: [inktomi.com] Would seem the only way they can make this work is to slow down or stop the spidering and indexing that's their norm. And as of last Thrurday - that's the case. Glitch? Part of the NS deal?

Steve

[NFFC]

That's what stood out to me stcrim,

>re-indexing of the Web page every 48 hours

Combine that with guaranteed inclusion and you have a powerful package.

Looking on the bad side, dependent on pricing etc, these "added" costs to SEO may have the effect of preventing many micro/small businesses from effectively promoting their business throughout the search engines.

Add up yahoo biz express, looksmart, goto, "the Ink deal" and a significant proportion of the customers budget has already been spent.

One of my primary motivations as an SEO is the "thrill" of giving large corporations a "bloody nose" [virtually of course!"] on behalf of my clients. The increase in the budget required to effectively compete in the Internet market place will cut more and more of the small businesses out of the marketplace.

On the bright side, again dependent on cost, wouldn't it be great to have guaranteed inclusion in the Ink dB *and* re-spidering every 48 hours. If the client was prepared to pay the fee can you imagine the amount of work that could be cut out of SEO for Ink, which everyone must agree is a very rewarding dB, but *very* high maintenance.

However, ultimately this is pay for placement/listing, will such sites be identified in the results, or will "Joe Surfer" be deceived about the integrity of the search results presented to him?

[jilly]

Steve:

This would explain a lot. :( I would think this might be why the spidering of many sites has slowed or stopped recently. Or am I just being paranoid?

Jill

[stcrim]

Jilly,

I think you're right on the money.

Steve

[Cisco]

==============================
everyone must agree is a very rewarding dB...
==============================

Yea, up until MSN moves on. Then ink traffic will be just about nil.

Seems to me that ink has been unable to combat spam, so now they have decided to put the burden on the backs and wallets of the webmasters. A spidering SE charging to be visited by the spider is the most assinine thing I have ever heard of.

[scott]

As if the so called "level playing field" wasn't tilted enough before! Whoever said LOVE made the world go round anyway? Must have been some "tree-huggin' hippie freak living in denial..."

[seth_wilde]

This could have a negative effect on some sites with really small budgets (if the price is steep). But overall I think this is great. It'll make my job so much easier having they're spiders consistantly visting every 48 hours (I mean think of the potential).

[jilly]

Scott:

ROFLMAO! That was too funny and unfortunately too real!
This is going to be interesting to say the least. A search engine that uses paid for submissions and they guarantee they'll stay put in the listings as long as they pay... hmmm... I bet the search results will be just lovely.

What to do? I guess we'll just have to be like the rest of the business world and fork over or close the doors, eh?

Jill

[Brett_Tabke]

Cisco! Welcome back.

Iwon is still in the game and quite happy to send referrals lately.

[PeteU]

As far as I understand the paid listing would only include _one_ page presumably home page of your site.
If the price is not outrageous it could be interesting.
I can see it now, 1000 most popular keyword phrases, each one with the top 20 listings cloaked, and continuously improved, adjusted and fine tuned every 48 hours by the SEO master gods :)
On the other hand if MSN indeed moves on, who would really care about Inktomi...

[stcrim]

Assuming the good folks at INK aren't just plain dumb - this pay to play thing is probably not going to be a problem. Ink claims to have over a billion pages indexed.

Let's say they could get 1 percent to pay (and that's impossible) what would happen to their database and its quality???

This may turn out to be more like Yahoo Express Submissions. And in that case seth_wilde is right, we all could benefit from the service.

I do wonder if yahoo jumped ship because of INK's pay to play plans that would have conflicted with yahoos pay to play...

Steve

[gil]

My 'key word search topics lead to about 15,000 pages. I wonder how they are going to determine position where you have search terms with many hundreds of pages scrambling to be first?

And my area of interest is probably rather small compared to some. What will happen to the topics that have 50K or 100K pages? It seems impossible.......is it?

We had real good luck in the past by including hundreds of search word items in our body copy and also meta tags but it appears this may change.

Any new news today on that damnable pay to list scheme?

Gil

[seth_wilde]

"As far as I understand the paid listing would only include _one_ page presumably home page of your site."

Actually I didn't get this impression at all. Inktomi has never worked this way before. And they do say they'll include your web site, I would assume from how Inktomi operates this would mean the whole thing. (this is all just speculation of coarse)

[seth_wilde]

"As far as I understand the paid listing would only include _one_ page presumably home page of your site."

Actually I didn't get this impression at all. Inktomi has never worked this way before. And they do say they'll include your web site, I would assume from how Inktomi operates this would mean the whole thing. (this is all just speculation of coarse)

[OptWizard]

From what I get from this whole pay to play scheme is that NSI is partnering with Ink cause they are loosing customers cause many places are charging cheaper than NSI for domain names. LEts hope customers outside the NSI realm can still use this pay system as well. They only thing now is what mark-up should US SEO wizards charge for the Ink listing..LOL Also this just GUARANTEES you to get listed not ranking at all. So you can pay and be listed crap. So Opt will be a little easier cause if the spider does come ever 48 hours then at least we can tweak and tweak to out little hearts content

[PeteU]

It says in their release:

"The jointly-developed service will offer domain name registrants the ability to ensure fast inclusion of their Web site in the Inktomi Web search database and re-indexing of the Web page every 48 hours."

Notice they say Web site and then Web page, hard to tell what they really mean.

[gil]

I think from INKS standpoint it is probably impossible to list and index EVERY page of every site. Some sites may (or could have) 1000 pages and it doesn't take a wizard to figure out how quick INKS database could be eaten up if every page was indexed.
Also imagine what a cluttered search page this could create. I think we better be satisfied with a well tweaked home page. Hope I'm wrong though. Many times I thought to myself, this is too easy. I'd list a few pages with hundreds of search terms tweaked to the gills and voila I'd come out on top for a search for any one of the items even though my actual home page may have had only a 10 or 20th spot listing.

Oh well, guess we'll all just have to sit tight and see what happens. By the way, what exactly is a SEO (Search Engine
Officer ?)?

Regards,
Gil

[OptWizard]

Search Engine Optimizer

[stcrim]

OptWizard, Welcome!

I always thought "seo" meant Sanity Endangerment Organization.

In time we'll all know what INK's up to - but I doubt it's going to exclude people who don't pay, because there just wouldn't be much left of their database... ...but we'll see!

Steve

[NFFC]

>tweak and tweak to out little hearts content

Good point Opt, but lets hope we can keep the spider out when rankings are *good*, we could end up paying for a listing and then using robots.txt to keep slurp out.;)

I really don't think that this will have a great effect on the people who frequent here, I think the "deal" is aimed more at encouraging "Joey Normal" to pay more for their domains and may snag a few "suckers".

We will adapt and thrive, making the *very* best use of the resources available and taking changes such as these in our stride.

We may also see the rise of index.htm as a hallway page.;)

"A spidering SE charging to be visited by the spider", agreed Cisco, that is *so* surreal.LOL

[OptWizard]

Well if FREE service is still available then why pay first off...If Canada.com and Goo are still around getting pages in INK within 2 days or so. Its just so silly for them to charge. Whats next paying for a spider to come to your site and "maybe" spin its web of luck around you to rank you a little higher. I think I might just pay one of these spider under the table..LOL

Then again this pay service can benefit SEO cause for those who have clients that NEED to get into these engines at least you know its ALMOST a guarantee to get in...Then WE WORK OUR MAGIC to get them to the TOP

[jimmy6]

OptWizard-
I spoke with an INK employee yesterday and he said long-term they were unsure if they would be taking regular submissions. I can't really see this happening since there still are many websites with great information that aren't built with the idea of making money. These sites can't afford to pay to be listed. Also, without them in the db, INK becomes a less effective search option.

[dannysullivan]

Yes, right now the plan is that you'd get your home page, and only your home page, listed in 48 hours and revisted every 48 hours. I'd expect this would change in the future. The details I have from Inktomi are at [searchenginewatch.com]

[NFFC]

When I picked that up from your newsletter what stood out was the fact that Ink are only referring to the homepage.

Could this have the perverse effect of making Ink *less* likely to spider other pages of the site or indeed follow the links from your home page?

[Kamikaze]

Good to have you here Danny Sullivan!