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thanks for your help guys
Lycos paid inclusion [search.lycos.com]
Fast PartnerSite [fastsearch.com]
We've been talking about it here [webmasterworld.com]
When I pay for InSite, I might end up not showing up at Lycos Europe, and vice versa.
But perhaps someone who did sign up will know more?
Annual Membership: $18.00
Full refresh of your site content every 48 hours.
But when you go in to subscribe, you find that that's just for the privilege of paying yet more money:
Lycos InSite Select costs $18.00/year plus $12.00 per page
And still their wording is misleading. Here is the wording for their 10-page example:
$138 ($18/yr and $12 for 10 pages)
To an English speaking person, "$18/yr and $12 for 10 pages" would equal $30.00.
At any rate, they DO still offer free submission, but with the usual 4 to 6 week wait, and it is not guaranteed. In a break from the usual extortion we are now being charged across the net, it also appears that free submission is limited to one page of your site.
The whole thing has been reworked since I last checked.
This is what they state in bold on the first productpage for InSite Select [searchservices.lycos.com]:
LIMITED TIME
INTRODUCTORY RATE
Annual Membership: $18.00
Annual Cost per URL: $12.00
What you get is this:
-Guaranteed inclusion within 48 hours
-Full refresh every 48 hours
-Guaranteed inclusion for a full year
-Personalized Site Submission Reports
Is it worth it?
I guess it's aimed at the lazy and inexperienced websiteowner. Also if you have a crucial page in your site that you need to have in there. Plus it might be good for experimenting.
But submitting a whole site? Hmmm.
Funny though... They immediately ran through the site and upon checking the status of the URL... It offered to go ahead and spider the other78 pages on the site... Which, would be great... But, then, I saw my *confirm transaction* form... With a total of $936.00 due!!! Safe to say, I canceled that one!
~ Eric
>*confirm transaction* form...
hehe pretty straight forward business tactics...
Back to Lycos...
It came in and did more of a deep crawl than I have ever seen any spider go about with. Honestly, I had to check back to my account to make sure they (Lycos) did not go through and spider all of my links for $12 a piece!
Thankfully, looking into the logs proved to show that they indexed much more.
The user agent that they send out shows itself as:
Lycos_Spider_(modspider)" 209.202.194.240
...According to their documentation, the site should be included on the 24th. I will be watching closely, thats for sure!
~ Eric
So, I guess the main difference between the three products - Lycos.com InSite, Fast PartnerSite and Lycos.Europe PFI - is the 48H refreshment: you get that only at the respective point of inclusion.
So while with Fast you get included to all three, neither Lycos.com nor Lycos.europe will refresh your listings on a 48h basis when submitted via Fast PartnerSite.
To get that you have to submit to the respective Lycos program.
As far as I can make out, FAST paid inclusion clients can't be in Europe - nor can Lycos.com clients. Which leaves Lycos.de for German speaking users.
Clear as mud :(
It's pwd protected.
WebGeneral,
It is $18 for a membership, then $12 for each individual URL for inclusion.
~ Eric
Also for all folks interested in Fast and especially PartnerSite a new exhaustive article at pandia.com [fastsearch.com] is recommendable.
I know, this is not what all you Euro/UK folks have been waiting for....
The German site doesn't seem to be updated regarding the InSite service.
Anyway, if you really want to have the entire site spidered there's the InSite Pro
- 1-250 Pages: $189.00/month
- 251-500 Pages: $279.00/month
A quick calculation shows that the discount kick is at the 188th URL. (Then, for some reason, it gets expensive again at 251 URLs. Weird.)
*Added*
Anyway, the introductory price is nice in comparison to Inktomi's revised prices. For 10 URLs you pay $264 at Inktomi and $138 at Lycos (Fast).
The feature that it will spider your site and offer to index every other page (and appropriate fee) seems great. I was contemplating doing these paid deep-submits after relaunching a client's site, but generating the hundreds/thousands of URLs seemed aggravating.
I don't know if I would use it, or just submit the 100-200 pages that are going to be really SE friendly, but if they use any sort of link popularity, having all the pages in their database will likely help.
However, what about real time updating. If we add more pages, do I need to manually add them? Will the robot find them anyway and index them? Will the robot find them and charge me?
If I have to go and update it every week I'll lose my mind.
Alex
But I'm not sure on the exact technical details of the administration. Perhaps you could send an inquiry to Lycos - I'd expect them to be rather responsive on this matter.
Interesting little TEASER from Fast, given out via above mentioned Pandia article:
"Fast and Lycos is planning reports on keyword ranking and keyword click-throughs."
(edited by: heini at 10:23 pm (utc) on Feb. 25, 2002)
following my almost $900+ transaction, I found out that there was an error within making a transaction, and two different cards were billed.
It gave me an error, saying "an invalide credit card number has been entered" Low and behold though, they've both got $30 charges!
Anyways, I emailed them and called them on the error. They emailed back, apologetic, and stated that a $30 refend has been granted to one account.
So far, I've seen the Lycos Mod-Spider come in and play till it turns blue. Yet, searching lycos and fast both for the domain name (without the "www") in the search box... yields nothing.
Another funny thing? They claimed on Friday, the 22d, that my site would appear within the indexes by the 24th. And, I'm thinking today is the 25th.
Ah well, nothing like money well wasted. Er, spent!
~ Eric
Update on European PFI at Lycos.de:
up to 100 URLs
first URL 38 Euro,
following URL 19 Euro eachUp to 250 URLs 2450 €.
Up to 500 URLs 3950 €all fees annual
Still in beta.
...And so *did* my credit cards. Then again, I'm thankful that I didn't see charges on my accounts for $900+!
Looking into the logs reveals nothing as well. This is my quick summarization:
Submitted on 02/22/02
Supposed to be indexed and included on 02/24/02
Spiders Refresh every 48 hours.
...Spiders came on 02/24/02, but not since. Today, 020/25 - the site has not been spidered once by Lycos ModSpider or any other Lycos/Fast agents.
Seems like a hole in the wallet to me!
Lazerzubb:
Try looking under your logfile's "browsers" list. (That's where the Fast spider has been turning up in my logfile.)
>Are my search result rankings enhanced or affected by my participation in FAST PartnerSite?
No. Participating in the FAST PartnerSite program does not alter or enhance your result rankings. Providing searchers with premium, credible and relevant search results is what had made FAST a leading search provider for the web, and the integrity of our results will continue to take precedent.
> How are submitted pages ranked?
Submitted pages are ranked using the identical relevancy algorithms as all other pages in the index.
----------------
So, pay for nothing?? I mean, they give no benefit to your page, the algo is based on the site scale, so 1 page will not work...
Am I wrong??
Neon, based on the wording you presented, it certainly sounds as though there is no benefit. Fast: "Give us money." Customer: "Will it affect anything?"- Fast:"No, not at all but give us money anyway." Sounds like what happens in a dark alley.
Gotta laugh at that, I guess.
So, pay for nothing?
No, you pay for spidering (P4S). That way your pages get indexed more frequently. If you change a page, the SE's database will reflect that in a few days rather than a few weeks. ;)
In addition you may get some extra benefits in the form of reports.
the algo is based on the site scale, so 1 page will not work
Apparently other pages of your site may be spidered as well, but they'll not be indexed that often.
Thanks for pointing this out NeoN. I take that as a promise. If Fast really gave PFI pages a boost in ranking, it would seriously hurt their credibility and the quality of their serps.
BUT: having the chance to get you site reindexed each 24-48 hours leaves you with a lot of room for experimenting... studying the algo... being able to react fast on changes...
I for one can imagine a few scenarios in which having just one page of a site in the paid inclusion program would make a lot of sense.
was the page indexed before you paid?
Thats an interesting question. The site was indexed but not the index.html page and the page that was listed had slipped on our target search words. In alltheweb we were at number 1 or 2 for the last few months but only if the exact phrase box was checked. On Lycos.com we had slipped from number 1 to number 5 and then nowhere to be seen.
Now we have the correct page indexed (the one we want users to enter by) and this is at number 2.
