Is Inktomi STRICTLY PFI?

Slurp's been visiting & I sure haven't paid!

[dwilson]

Is there a way into Inktomi's results w/o paying? Slurp's been to my new site a few times ... though it hasn't crawled much of the site yet.

[panic]

If your site has good content, it will be crawled by Ink for free. :)

[Mohamed_E]

Ink now (since August 2002, I believe) has a two pronged approach to indexing the web.

They will crawl anyone who pays.

They selectively (but widely) crawl the net for free.

The criteria for the free crawl are not totally clear. They obviously crawl "important" sites (I suspect that links play a part in that definition), but also crawl fairly obscure sites.

My main site, which has a fair number of links pointing to it, was crawled as soon as they started their new approach. A new site I started this past spring, with very few links, had its index page indexed almost immediately, but the interior pages only started being indexed a month or so ago.

[panic]

The criteria for the free crawl are not totally clear. They obviously crawl "important" sites (I suspect that links play a part in that definition), but also crawl fairly obscure sites.

My new site that I started with 0 incoming links got indexed in Inktomi about two weeks after I submitted.

[nileshkurhade]

My site is indexed for Free and I am on top no.1 position for my 3 most important KWs.

[rfgdxm1]

There is no way any serious general search engine could be PFI only. The only sites that would pay are e-commerce ones, and the vast majority of searches people do are not looking for things to buy. Only a pure e-commerce search engine could be strictly PFI.

[DaveAtIFG]

Ink has always spidered and indexed sites at no cost. They've been doing this since before PFI existed. It seems they've become more active/aggressive in their spidering in the past few months.

There are three routes into Ink:
1. PFI
2. Use a free submit link
3. Wait for an Ink spider to find a link to your site

[TinkyWinky]

But will submitting numerous url's through PFI etc speed up or increase the likelihood of a major Slurp trawl?

[Mohamed_E]

The conventional wisdom is that it will decrease the likelihood of a free crawl. Why crawl your site for free when you have shown your willingness to pay? I am not sure how much evidence there is to back this up, as I have never even contemplated paying.

[DaveAtIFG]

My experience is that PFI pages are crawled promptly and often while the remainder of the site enjoys the usual crawls.

[andy_boyd]

I was spidered by Slurp long before I paid up, but now things are much more regular and reliable so paying is worth it in that sense.