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Looks like new submissions now require that you pay to be re-reviewed every year. Haha. It's still worth it for some sites, but thats a little much IMHO. For most, its money better spent on goto. And as soon as next year's renewal fees come in, they'll probably change the entire SERP's to PPC. Lol.
The way I see it is that all the SE's are drawing a line in the sand and staking out their territory ... delineating their market share and slice of the pie. Google and Fast have maintained their business model and intend (I hope) to continue to offer what has been termed the "Free Internet" which includes everyone ... including us little guys.
The others, Yahoo, Overture and to a certain extent, LookSmart and Alta Vista et al, are going after those who would prefer to pay to advertise and not have to worry about SEO, page rank, search results, etc. which all affects the way their products are presented. It will be intersting to see which of them survives and which don't.
Who knows, once all the dust settles (if it ever does), these new strategies may work out. However, I have my doubts. I've read about the problems some of you SEO's have in dealing with the "large advertiser". Seems as though this is the answer to all their concerns. Throw money at and get it done their way. All Yahoo and Overture will be in two years time are online magazines less the feature articles ... just pages and pages of ads for the big companies. If that's what they want and if they think that's what the public wants ... well who are we to stop them?
The real task will be to re-educate the public as to where to find the rest of the "real world" and the free internet. I'd love to chip in a couple of hundred dollars towards a Google or Fast advertising campaign to do just that!
The SE's and directories are divying up the world wide web, trying to shape and mold parts of it as they see fit in an attempt to claim it as their own. May the best SE win! My money is on Google, Fast and the free internet!
Democracy will reign in the end. Yahoo and the others will discover that there really is a limit to the bottomless pit. Overture and Yahoo are only flailing at the brass ring in an attempt to prolong the inevitable. As long as they have competition out there offering free listings ... they don't stand a chance!
I wonder if they sit in the boardroom scratching their heads and wondering why Google and Fast are gaining momentum and growing more and more every day ... while they are laying people off all over the place? DUH!!!
Fast and Google's best strategy would be to continue offering free search listings and selling their data to various partners and wait tha bas***d's out. Once the Goliath's are defeated, they can start charging for listings. As long as they don't get greedy (and shoot themselves in the foot like Yahoo) ... there is no reason this strategy won't work.
I'm only surprised that they didn't find a way to legally extend it to existing listings, which -- and this is heresy -- would be a good thing, because it would cut the deadwood out of the index and make it more useful for people who are serious about doing business on the Net.
That is what the web is to me considering what little amount of traffic great search engine placement gets me. I have 10 feeder sites that have great Google positioning for enormously critical dating keywords, but I only get 100 visitors per day from all of those. My one Yahoo listing is 9 times more effective than a few dozen Google listings. The numerous MSN and Alta Vista listings that put me high up for keywords like "bikini dating" get me maybe 4 visitors per day while the one Yahoo listing gets me 4 visitors per minute.
The public is like a herd of lemmings. They should not be going to Yahoo so much to search. That is why Yahoo is getting arrogant.
I guess I'm one of the only ones that sees an opportunity here... lots of crap sites will get tossed along with a bunch of bait and switch sites, etc. By the sounds of it, lots of seo will fall out too.... but basically it comes down to, 'is $250 worth all the traffic you get from them in a year?'... not just yes, H*LL YES! If you can't make $250 off your yahoo listing with a 'for-profit' site, then you did something drastically wrong.... either your rank sucks, or you have no idea how to convert your traffic....
$.83 a day? sounds reasonable to me..... not as cheap as it was, but reasonable.... some of the terms I rank in Y! cost more than $.83 a *click* at goto... even I can do the math on this one.
The concern is that Y! is now not affordable by sites that don't sell anything, from which the great majority of objective information for which the Web was once famous comes from.
The implication is that the Web will become a mega shopping mall if only web sites that sell things or have a commercial objective are the only ones with exposure.
The further implication is that people will start reducing their Web usage, to the detriment of both commercial and free webmasters.
My view is that things will evolve to save the Web before becomes a mega mall and an unpleasant and unfulfilling experience for most.
a) Hikes prices without ANY warning
b) Suddenly decreases the value of the product (by inserting GoTo listings) having sold it days earlier
deserves to go under. Such arrogance and customer unfriendliness will eventually find any business out, deservedly so.
Yahoo have no great plan here - they are just grabbing cash regardless of it's effect on the quality of their product. Every act I have seen from them for months has fit the same pattern... cash grab and degradation of product.
It's actually a pattern we have seen repeated by other failing businesses and especially SEs. We all know what failure to invest in the quality of our products leads to don't we.
As for some of the arguments above... $83 per day may be reasonable in some markets/sites, but for most it is simply a non-starter.
It's not worth being too worried about it though... I confidently predict a gradual but sustained decline in the number of Yahoo searchers as their SERPS continue to decline in quality.
I can't understand why they didn't ease in a little bit and make renewals somewhat less expensive than the original review. To my way of thinking, they would have converted many more people that way and had higher revenues in total.
Someone let their spreadsheet run wild on this move.
Looking though one's looking glass I can see Y becoming an industrial based directory with only large manufacturing/specialised companies listing there, similar to some of the directories that engineering companies buy, this would obviously mean downsizing which is what they are currently doing and just going for the cream of the market, the demise of Y is not going to happen (unfortunately) more like a shift into another direction
>I can't understand why they didn't ease in a little bit
That would imply they care, which lets face it looking at the past they don't give a monkey
Actually, that isn't a concern. Yahoo's free submit is still alive and kicking.
Their Biz Express is only for commercial sites, and not all commercial sites at that.
What I feel sick about is that I'm part of the problem. Back in the day when Yahoo was it, I set Yahoo as the default home page for all my corporate users. Didn't we all? Now those people think Yahoo *is* the internet. If Yahoo is down (rare, but it happens) they can't figure out how to work. Better search enginge? Ha! Is there more than one?
Reeducation is the key, but it's going to be a long process.
<silver lining>On the bright side, once people learn about the increasing hard costs of SE marketing, they MAY see the need for having a professional handle the deal, rather than risk weak listings, in bad categories.</silver lining>
The free lunch is almost over, but the buffet is still open. You gotta make careful choices what to put on your plate.
In costs them zero in marketing bucks to get us to use/recommend their services. How many of you have thought after seeing their TV ads and 'sponsorship' of programmes...'that reminds me, I must use Yahoo' - LOL nobody I would bet.
So, you would think the least they could do in these 'cash strapped' times is give us at least some warning or added value for our ever increasing fees.
Even if, as part of their business analysis and planning (do you think they actually do this?), they have decided that the 'end user' client is their prime target, how does continued price hikes and no notice look to them?
Desperate? on the brink of collapse? completely missing the point of building relationships with clients? - IMHO all of the above.
However, as we all know this approach to the SEO and good business practice is not limited just to Yahoo.
If I had a group of people who promoted, sold and championed my services worldwide with no business development cost to me at all I would treat them with at least the minimum of respect.
Wouldn't it be nice if this was the New Years resolution at Yahoo - every the optimist, must have been at the 'festive wine' too much over the past few days!!!
Actually, that isn't a concern. Yahoo's free submit is still alive and kicking.
Their Biz Express is only for commercial sites, and not all commercial sites at that.
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I thought that to get a free listing you had to be a registered not-for-profit or maybe edu or gov. If I'm right
that leaves out a lot of sites. We seemed to confuse a yahoo rep a couple of years ago, when we asked how non-US companies register to be "not-for-profit", as I think they specific that it has to be a US registered not-for-profit in some database or other.. And what Ive gathered from WMW is that free submits go nowhere.
II'd love to beleive that free submits are live and well, but cant see it. Any other thoughts/evidence on this?
Not true. From Yahoo's "suggest a site" link [add.yahoo.com], under the "Standard Free" button:
>Most non-commercial sites have been suggested to Yahoo! this way
And trust me, they do indeed still add non-commercial sites via that button.
With all due respect, Yahoo is nothing but a black hole when it comes to free submission. Exceptions might be regional listings and categories that have little commercial value, if any, such as the ones listing fan sites. I hate to repeat this over and over, but they don't even care to visit your site. The only people I have seen from Yahoo arrived to my site via Google apparently looking for something else (and I submitted it a couple of times during the last 9 months or so). Site logs don't lie. They simply don't come if you don't pay.
The ROI on a $300 per year investment ranks last when compared to Overture Bids, Inktomi Inclusion Pages, and Google optimzed pages.
The Yahoo directory product, in terms of value to me, is $300.00 for the first year, and $50.00 after that.
Which is fair for Yahoo, the first $300.00 covers their review and some profit, and the cost after that is pure profit less a quick review cost.
If the $300.00 per year price is an attempt to raise expectations of future revenues for Yahoo, I am afraid that any forecast based upon this may prove to be partly cloudly.
I beg to differ. I submit them at least 2 or 3 most months, and have had all but 6 listed in the last year. (One of those was submitted only 3 weeks ago, so it may not actually be a failure.)
I have gotten 3 sites listed via Free Submit in the past couple of months. None were regional, and all had some income-generating aspects about them.
Yahoo has never stopped their free submit. I don't know how to prove that to you, but it is indeed true. This very forum site was listed free earlier this year.
A problem I see is that people might feel captive to the Yahoo listings because of the fast inclusion in Google when first getting the Yahoo listing, and the boost to Page Rank.
Sorry, I have not used AdWords and have no data.
< A problem I see is that people might feel captive to the Yahoo listings because of the fast inclusion in Google when first getting the Yahoo listing, and the boost to Page Rank.
I have never used Yahoo to get listed in Google. Instead I link from an site that is already listed in Google.
So far I have choosen to ignore page rank.
I produce pages to rank well in Google under keywords that buyers used in overture directed searches.
For a Yahoo representative to respond (rather than just 'watch', as I am sure they do)would imply some kind of consideration for their customers or an understanding of a 'customer service' ethic, which adds value to the fees you pay to them.
Dont hold your breath!!!
That would be nice, but it's probably not an option.
How could a professional ethically boycott what is still arguably the biggest traffic generator on the Internet? That would be akin to telling a client not to get a listing in the Yellow Pages based only on one's dislike for AT&T.
Yes, we can certainly steer clients in other directions, and I for one definitely intend to do that. But Yahoo cannot simply be ignored, and they know it. It's what allows them to do this sort of thing. I am of the opinion that I have to at least explain to the client that Yahoo is an option, even while pointing out the downside.
Our only hope, really, is that the consumers on the Internet become educated to the point that they realize that Yahoo is by far not the best directory on the web. At that point, Yahoo would become less and less important. The problem, however, is that the bulk of consumers on the Internet are not easily educable. For proof of this, take a look at how many people find a site by putting the entire domain name (including extension) in search boxes!
[Edited to fix grammatical error which would make me a laughingstock]
(edited by: Laisha at 5:10 pm (gmt) on Dec. 31, 2001)
