Yahoo Snubs Express Submit Customers

You paid for a listing...they didn't tell you they would hide it

[Lingerboy]

This is bad. How could Yahoo, in good concience, take all those fees from all of those customers, knowing full well they would dilute the value of what was provided for said fee. IMO this is dishonest and a prime example of "bait and switch". I don't care what their agreement says....this is wrong. This ranks up there with the Looksmart move. I'd say it's worse b/c the scale of those affected (robbed) is far wider.....IMO

[2_much]

Lingerboy, I agree with you on this one. I'm sure they had their reasons, but obviously it's going to stop submissions. Unbelievable that Yahoo would do this!

I'm always more interested in figuring out how to move on. Any ideas what to do now? Do we stop submitting to Yahoo, and spend all time and energy on Google? Even though Google's is king, pay less attention to Google and start looking at Ink and other alternatives?

I'm at a loss.

[Nick_W]

Well I was seriously considering an investment/gamble for one of my affiliate sites...

No longer. PR just isn't enough...

Nick

[nipear]

I just submitted a site this morning. :(

[edited by: 2_much at 10:50 pm (utc) on Oct. 9, 2002]
[edit reason] language [/edit]

[jeremy goodrich]

Yep, the PageRank transfer from a lot of those listings has been getting smaller and smaller.

Now that they are doing this - I don't honestly see how I can justify paying to get into Yahoo - there are other ways.

It's pretty ironic - I got an acceptance letter for the last site I submitted just three days ago within minutes of the news...for once, I was pretty unhappy to see the email - even if it did mean I got in.

[Lingerboy]

My guess is that this is temporary. Yhaoo has to MONOTIZE the listings. In this deal....that cash is flowing in the wrong direction. I bet they will supliment with INK and AV trusted feed CPC listings. Maybe Yahoo will launch their own trusted feed product....maybe Google will. Whatever happens, this means Google is in a prime position to start charging webmaster for inclusion. What is that saying about absolute power.....

[Nick_W]

3 main options now available to us:

• The back door: Non commercial free listings with 'creative' PR distribution and links to the 'target' site.
  
• Hunt down the '12yr old johny's pokemon sites and bung 'em a few quid..
  
• Smaller directories/specialist portals..
  

Sod that for a laugh...

Nick

[Lingerboy]

Sign me up for that one...

It's just really stupid....what are they thinking. My guess is they are doing a quick fix to try to bring the relevance back, b/c they are losing so much market share to Google. What they don't get, it that Google is buying not selling. Google will slip in the Adwords within weeks....I'm sure they left that door open. Bad move.

[heini]

So, what did that contract with Yahoo say about displaying your listings?
Probably nothing.
If it was remotely similar to the agreement I know it just said you poaid for a review(!) for inclusion to the Yahoo directory. Nothing else.
End of story with legal issues.

I'm absolutely sure the people at Yahoo would have never allowed for the slightest chance of getting sued.

Lets face it, we all knew for a long time a big change was in order at Yahoo.

[jaytierney]

Anyone who knows anything about the law will tell you that a contract can only be taken so far. If a company blatantly misrepresents their product, they can be held accountable. Millions of pissed of people can certainly make a difference.

[red_bull]

I think yahoo are trying to draw a clear line between the directory and their search. I belive that they are trying to make us belive that when you pay for your listing, you are paying for a directory listing. I think yahoo has a different definition of these items than we have. To yahoo the directoy is the categories that you drill through from the yahoo homepage, search is where you type in keywords and click on search. I think the days of the keyword search searching the directory are over. Directory is directory search is search.

The only way directry results will show in keyword searches is when you do a search from a searchbox within a category or directory results page.

[Chef_Brian]

Dam ... My Luck

Two sites listed in the last three days ...

- $600 bucks

Bummmmmmmer!

Chef Brian

such is life with affiliate programs and making a buck online I guess!

[Internet Marketing M]

Yeah, I'll pay $300 for the little arrow which takes you to my competitors sites! Oh and yeah does anyone even see my red arrow unless I am on the first page of Google? Ummmm no.
Click: [add.yahoo.com...]

Let them know what they've done wrong.

[fathom]

Well I was seriously considering an investment/gamble for one of my affiliate sites...
No longer. PR just isn't enough...

Submission to Yahoo should be considered as a strategic placement for enhanced traffic.

IMO submission just for the sake of increasing PageRank isn't that much different from paying for PageRank from a site advertising PageRank for sale.

$300.00 per year with a placement in the right category can add thousands of uniques each month or even per day.

In most instances, PageRank from just 1 link from anywhere wouldn't produce this result by increasing your Google SERPs.

Recommend you re-consider your re-consideration.

[PPCBT_guy]

fathom,

But now dir listings will pull only a small portion of traffic reviously pulled.

$300 for a year of increased pagerank is a good deal. It wasn't said that a Yahoo link would be the complete Google Pagerank strategy.

If Google uses Yahoo dir listings for Pagerank, than submitting to Yahoo to increase Pagerank is perfectly acceptable. Google made the rules, there is nothing wrong with using those rules..

[cyan_corp]

Hello Lingerboy

My condolences to you. I fully understand your situation. I submitted our web site to Yahoo--a paid submission of $300/year and at first we were included and ranked highly for two important keywords.

I checked today and our web site has disappeared from the results under these important keywords. Our competition remains in the results. I agree with jaytierney that millions of pissed off people are going to react to this. We have limited marketing spend and to throw it away to a prominent Search Engine like Yahoo! is a serious waste.

It seems our internet destinies are controlled on the most part by Search Engines whose unethical acts are hurting our traffic and ultimately our business. Im lost for words and alternatives at the moment...

CYAN_CORP

[Fiver]

boy, guess we'll have to start seoing then huh ;)
(ouch, ouch)

[ckern]

cyan_corp: I could not have put it more clearly, "unethical acts", this is exactly what it comes down to.

[pete]

"Anyone who knows anything about the law will tell you that a contract can only be taken so far. If a company blatantly misrepresents their product, they can be held accountable. Millions of pissed of people can certainly make a difference."

I'm afraid that the contract is very clear and that there has been no misrepresentation from Yahoo! whatsoevr.

From day 1 when they introduced the paid submission policy, they made it very clear that all that you were paying for was an express review of your website and that if it conformed to their criteria, that you would be listed in their directory within a certain time period. At no stage has Yahoo! made a claim that your listing would appear above anyone elses or that the methodology that they use to govern search results will not change.

Legally, there is nothing that one can do! I have lost some great listings for clients and will have some interesting discussions with them in the next couple of weeks.

I cant see the current listings staying as they are for too long. Yahoo! will find an elegant way to promote their directory listings above a third party providers. With recurring directory fees, they have to! One might find that all the listings that were obtained pre paid submission will be relegated and paid listings will be given more prominence in some form or shape.

Interesting times!

[jen24815]

I hope you're right and the current listings don't stay that way for long.

Legally, I'm sure they covered their you-know-what. I'm also sure that they got a big laugh all the way to the bank, though, with that $300 some of us plunked down last week for what amounts to a Google listing!

Yes, you only pay for consideration, but we paid that money under the impression that we would be considered for inclusion in something that was unique - not just a rehash of Google, which is basically the situation I'm in with my site/keywords.

I'm not upset b/c I paid $300 & don't show up. In the "old" Yahoo, with one of my sites, I paid the $300 and didn't rank well at all, but I wasn't indignant at that, because I knew going into it that it was a chance I was taking. I was willing to take that chance, though, hoping to place well in a unique directory/search results.

What I AM upset about is that I paid $300 last week for a "duplicate" GOOGLE listing! Illegal? No.

...but where do I go to cancel all my recurring charges for next year because I'm darn sure not going to PAY for what I can get for free.

[gsmitchell]

For a slight increase in Pr it definitly is not worth $300! I agree with Jen in that we were hoping to be included in something unique not just a ton of Overture and Google listings! In the old Y I was # 1 for 4 keywords and # 2 for 2 others. I now have only 1 keyword in the top 40 and I have noticed a lot of spam.