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This is part 2 of the popular discussion. The purpose of it is to try to collect the facts about the Pay-for-Play situation in Europe. Pay-for-Play means the new money making schemes from leading search engines, under which you have to pay them to get indexed or to attain a high ranking. There have been new announcements about this every week this autumn and the other forums here at WebmasterWorld are filled with cries of outrage.
But how much of all this concerns Europe and how much is just for USA? Here's what we have found out so far:
Yahoo
Yahoo charges $199 for listings in their commercial categories, not the regional "World" category where European sites would have to go. The European Yahoo sites do not mention anything about payment. But if you have a dot-com address and want into the commercial part of their main index at Yahoo.com, then you have to pay. The requirement for a business based in an English speaking country has been lifted, but there is a bug in their payment program; When your credit card is reviewed, the program will not accept cards with a non-US billing address.
Altavista
Altavista has selected GoTo as their "exclusive Pay-For-Performance Search Provider". (Nov 16, 2000) GoTo will provide AV with "premium listings on select search results pages, beginning in November." There are "no plans" for Altavista's European subsidiaries, but "there may be a test in the UK".
Altavista will also use the LookSmart directory as their only one. LookSmart is free for non-profit organizations. Everybody else has to pay. See below.
Inktomi [inktomi.com]
Inktomi has just started charging money for indexing, with PositionTech [inktomi.com] as their general agent. The cost is $20/year for the first page, $10 ea/year for the following 100 and $6 ea/year for pages above 100. Inktomi has several offices in Europe already and is planning to open in Italy, Scandinavia, Spain, Switzerland and The Netherlands. Inktomi powers MSN Search, AOL and many other search engines [inktomi.com]
Lycos
Terra Lycos has announced that they will use GoTo in the same way as Altavista. It is unclear if this applies to Lycos Europe, in which Terra Lycos is but one of several owners.
GoTo [goto.com]
Goto charges per click in search results and site owners have to put in a bid for the search terms they are interested in. They are then ranked in the order of how much they paid. The smallest bid is $0.01 and there are lots of keywords left, even in the English language, where one cent will get you first page placement. GoTo provides "premium listings" for Altavista, AOL, Terra Lycos,Netscape, InfoSpace/Go2Net among others.
LookSmart [submit.looksmart.com]
LookSmart is a directory. They charge $199 for guaranteed review within 48 hours (but no guarantee that you will be listed.) For $79 they will review the site within 8 weeks, but still no guarantee. LookSmart provides the directory for Altavista, MSN, Excite and CNN.
United Kingdom: Godado.co.uk, UKSprite.com, Splut.com and eSpotting.com were described by NFFC here on Dec 17, 2000 [webmasterworld.com] See also the UK & Ireland Search Engines and Directories Forum [webmasterworld.com]
Germany: Cyfind.de, Hurra.de, Qualigo.de and Suchtreffer.de are discussed in Pay for Play #1 [webmasterworld.com] and in the Germany discussion #2 [webmasterworld.com].
Two good resources about Pay Per Click engines worldwide are The PPC forum of WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com] and PeyPerClickSearchEngines.com [payperclicksearchengines.com].
That's how much we have found out so far. Looks as if Google and Fast are the only remaining no cost worldwide engines and this time. If you know more or have experience from this that you would like to share, please post a reply right here. Or just ask a question.
Itīs absurd: they use tricks other SEs would penalize. (keyword-densitiy about 30%, only three links to their homepage, no relevant content)
So, we all know why they only accept paid submitting;-)
>So, we all know why they only accept paid submitting
Yeah. Can't trust free search engines, can you ;)
I believe they will lose more in the 1c's than they will gain in the 5c's. And the $20 minimum spend will create ill feeling as has already been shown in this thread.
Consider also exchange rates, $20 doesn't sound too much, but it is $40 here in Australia with the Aussie dollar so weak at the moment. Other countries will be feeling the pinch as well.
A case of killing the goose in my opinion.
Any professional actioneer knows that the way to get bids up is to start as low as possible. I think time will show that GoTo is indeed killing the goose that lays the golden egg.
GoTo is heading to Germany in 2002
per GoTo
Since the launch of the UK marketplace last November, GoTo UK has delivered more than 120 million leads through its partnerships with Freeserve, Ask Jeeves and LibertySurf. They want to building on this momentum by opening the German marketplace.
They say that they will keep us posted.
