Forum Moderators: goodroi
jon
I have excellent results on INK, so see no need to pay to be listed ... even if they never index my second tier pages, the results are very respectable. I suspect this is a result of my paid LookSmart listing.
Google is too important to me not to be at the top of the search results ... so I guess I would *grudgingly* pay if need be and then go cry in my beer at the loss of the last bastion of the FREE internet.
But, in answer to the question:
Depends on the cost and processing time.
If they offered 48 hour spidering for a reasonable charge I would be happy-ish (but not as happy as getting it for free, of course).
I guess what all SEO companies need is quick results.
It would also make the process of building quality link popularity a little easier, as those links that were on paid sites would factor in sooner.
Overall, I don't like the trend for paid inclusion but supply and demand rule the roost whether I like it or not.
the main criteria for small people i feel is a level playing field.
<childish moan>its unfair</moan> if big cooperates get different treatment due to their total spend as this would only lead to spamming.
Betrayed. Then again there is "good" PFP and "bad" PFP.
>and what would you do?
Cursed with arrogance that I produce/promote/own some of the best sites on the WWW I would content myself with the fact that they will lose more than me.
>last bastion of the FREE internet
Nothing free about Google, they use the content that webmasters provide to attract advertisers/partners who pay $.
You have to explain to them slowly and in in words of one syllable that their website is not worth anything if it doesn't appear in SERPS 1st page and so on ... I'm sure you've all been through it.
Effectively pay for play reduces our margins as SEOs, as ad budgets tend to be fixed.
It is once again a case of the big boys squeezing the little players out of the market, just like supermarkets ssqueezing out cornershops. (Which I suppose is good business for them and is only to be expected.)
What may happen is that a new free for inclusion engine will then take over from Google and its presence would tail off, this is what we have seen with the other engines as they go pay for play. Hence the dramatic rise of Google.
The SEOs will turn to Wisenut or its like and everyone will say that this engine is now producing clean unbiased listings and thus there will be another rise of a free submission engine.
Pay for play inevitably means lower quality listings (imho) and thus the drop off of the user base.
I kind of agree with you, but somewhere there must be a compromise that keeps the playing field level and the SERPS spam free.
Maybe Google can find it, cos Inktomi sure as hell didn't:(
google is the one i had to pay for
I agree with you ggrot
/Ove
I already recommend to all clients with an English version of the site to invest in Yahoo!, LookSmart and Inktomi. I probe competition on GoTo before talking about it. It costed one of my clients a little less than 20k in links prospection to get a decent position on Google for the keyword he wanted. They spent on Google advertising as some "probe" before making a decision.
If Google would ask 200$ or 300$ for inclusion of a new site for the regular crawling they do, I would not hesitate recommending this investment to my clients. It is fairly easy to make some rought evaluation of how many links we need to get and how this will cost. It up to my clients to decide what to do.
If Google could put some part of this extra income in marketing, I would be glad.
sure they are a business and need to make profit, but that can be done by pay-for-quick-inclusion without compromising results.
also, it would be better for the web if they continue to spider pages with intervals based on their algorithm (pagerank ... and other factors) regardless of paid-inclusion. this would ensure that quality pages will always get spidered fast enough whether paid or not.
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my first post. i find wmw quite informative.
<Taking off>If only one SE could develop some revenue discriminative PFP model to match the applicant net profits. .edu and .org sites could get in for free, SME for 100$ and M$ for 100$ a page. :) <landing on planet earth>
Fact: SE's need revenue to exist, provide free access to information, etc. To do this, basically every search engine on the internet relies on some form of advertising to subsidize the service they provide, without cost, to consumers, researchers, and us SEO's. ;)
If a search engine doesn't want to consider ads, or invading privacy and selling off the profiles of it's user base, what is a search engine to do?
Sure, Google may make a profit on ads alone right now, but if the ad market crumbles worse? They lose their users to some upstart? What then? They are almost forced to consider new sources of revenue, even before they need them...because they are venture capital backed, their goal is to become a publically held entity (I think) and this requires large earnings, as they started out their race with $50 million dollars or something like that.
So, consider google going pay for play...WiseNut might win...but then, if they turn to ads...seems like this cycle is going to continue...
So what alternatives are there for a search engine who wants to provide a good service, without marketing to the end user, and without considering paid inclusion (because people like us will always question their relevance, afterwards).
I mentioned in a thread here about Google rotating results to drive more people into purchasing their Adwords program. Since then, my site (see profile) has done nothing at all in search engine referrals from Google. It even gained in link popularity, and nothing else changed, but it is now buried. Could be a coincidence, but consider their company...
Yahoo invested heavily, they profile and sell the data they gather...google has a toolbar, which could watch you everywhere you go (or can it?), and most importantly, they watch this forum on a daily basis. At least, I believe they do.
So if we consider google going pay for play, consider this: they might already be doing more than anybody can guess, to commercially alter their results, without telling anyone. After all, do they have an obligation to you to tell you if they change something? Nope. Not that I've seen.
Back to the topic: if the model of pay for play is ultimately corrupting, and google is headed that way, what is a search engine to do for revenue that won't cost them their user base?
BTW, welcome to the fora, wmwu. Nice nick.
Can't say it better than that.
And, the fact that two college nobody's have created a dot com that didn't die when the internet bubble burst is inspiring. They did that *without* PFP.
Besides, they would make far *more* money if they had a Sergey Brin calendar ... especially if he was pictured wearing firefighting gear. :)
Well, I'm useless the rest of the afternoon ... there is no way I can get that out of my head.
I gave him a pen mustache, sideburns, glasses, and a funny hair. :)
Goto lost half a billion last year doing it. Goto listings are generally poor for consumers. As people realize this - goto will start to go down the drain - along with all the rest. Some may survive, but they can never survive HONESTLY.
Google CAN.
For example I enjoy the Inktomi pay-for-play: it is a useful tool.
Google is too important these days.
By modest i mean around 10 to 20 per URL with no vloume discounts.. That keeps the level playing field, doesn'y pealise countries with low exchange rates that much, and means you cant buy your way in by getting discounts for the more you pay.
I predicted in this forum around 6 months ago that google will go for pay for regular spidering route a la Position Tech/Inktomi. Still havent changed that opinion.
Which of these companies are rumored to be profitable?
Which of these companies are hemorrhaging cash?
