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> 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?
I think it's really too early to predict. The key thing I'm going to be watching is whether this means that free submit to Inktomi suddently becomes more sluggish. It's going to be hard to charge for 48 hour turnaround on home page listing if you also do it for free via hotbot, canada.com, etc. That makes you think they'll either slow things down, which raises issues about freshness, fairness, or I think we'll see them instead decide to somehow do a greater depth of crawl for particular sites. they've got until september to roll out the program, and I think they'll be watching for the reaction of what people want, in order to figure out better what to offer (and how to price it).
Good to see you over this way!!! I think the big key is that the "non SEO" types, are going to confuse the difference of a guaranteed inclusion in the index, with a guaranteed ranking, no matter what Inktomi posts about how a "paid for" URL will rank.
Us SEO types always start beating the drum against this type of submission service, as it raises our cost of doing business. It will be interesting to see how the rest of the world reacts (the masses), as Inktomi becomes the first actual SE, to charge for submission.
Though it's apples to oranges, AV did not fare well in their temporary switch to "bid for listings", Inktomi may meet up with the same type of negative PR.. Also, if Ink. still had Yahoo as a partner, they would be carrying a lot more clout into the paid submission route. Many may say, it's not worth it, because Inktomi only supplies secondary results to MSN/Hotbot/AOL.. IF Inktomi were the initial results for any of these major partners, it would be a whole different ball game... iWon has glutted their portal with other information sources as well, though Inktomi results still appear first, and foremost (for now).. :)
For us, SEO'ers, it's all going to come down to "is paid submission" the only avenue into the index... That's the $10,000 question in my mind.... Meanwhile, get everything into the permanent index that you can!!!!
Maybe not in this case.
Imagine the seanario;
Good afternoon, Inktomi Search Support, how may I help you.
Help me, help me! Not only am I a shareholder [just buy one, it has the same effect] but I have *paid* you to spider my web site, but you won't you follow any links.
Well sir we only guarantee to spider your "home" page
Look sunshine, people who haven't paid are getting their links followed, what about ME!
I see your point Sir, I will make sure that all links from your home page are followed and indexed
Thank you.
BTW Sir how many links do you have on your home page
Errr.. 278,468
This could be fun:)
You aren't implying they are tracking user behavior, for example clickthroughs á la Direct Hit style? It sure sounds like you are :)...
I feel like there is another shoe that should be dropping on this story.
I cannot believe that this pay for submission will be a long term play. For it to be worthwile, Ink. will have to aggressively differentiate between submitters who pay & those who dont, and that differentiator in time will have to be placement.
I suppose the alternative will be to put a time cap on the period that free submitters have to wait for inclusion in the DB and be exposed in results (say 3mths) and paid submitters get in within 48 hrs. But I still believe this will have to creep into preferred placement if it is going to succeed in attracting submitters to pay.
It seems that what Ink will be offering is a low priced product with a potentially high take up rate. I really can't see this effecting placement because of the numbers of competing domains, after all there is only room in the Top Ten for Ten sites.
What point would there be in offering a placement incentive to thousands of competing sites when the vast majority will be placed outside of the top ten. As customers of Ink we would then have a right to complain, which could be fun. :)
>a time cap on the period that free submitters
That could be what the last week has been about, a demo run?
I am reluctant to join in it, yet my rankings on the Inktomi sites have fallen for six months since. I thought it was because of the Yahoo switch to Gooogle.
how would you (or anyone else) sum up the Ink algorithm?
Anyway, back to the topic at hand:
I've used the program a touch (few dozen pages), and I can detect minor benefit in doing so. The real benefit is on new sites/pages for me and playing with the algo.
