INKTOMI's pay-to-play price increase via PT

...so where does it all end - and what about next year

[stcrim]

Unit (effective 02/18/01) Price per Unit (USD)
1st URL per domain $30.00
URLs 2-1000 $10.00 each

The first page jumped 33% in cost
The second 100 stayed the same
The next 900 pages jumped 40%

There must be a spider shortage :)

If your client goes directly to PT - WG or for that matter INK, can they get a better price? What protection do we have? Can INK's partners price us out of the market to get our clients to come directly to them?

What will successful pages cost to renew after the year?

OUCH!!!

-s-

[NFFC]

>OUCH!!!

Couldn't have put it better myself.

What interests me is whether the price is fixed by Inktomi or if the "service" providers are allowed to set their own prices.

Now in the normal course of events a price increase is prompted by a rise in demand, but with this being the wacky world of DotCom finance I wonder if things are not going according to plan [revenue wise] for Ink with the PFP deal.

BTW Whoever sets the price it is good business practice to let your "customers" know in advance, you know building trust, long term relationships etc. I just think that this is another example of the contempt with which Ink views it's "customers".

[Brett_Tabke]

That's all for me. The return ratio just isn't there. Hey, if I am paying for traffic or rankings that is one thing - but with Ink, we have to pay the spider fee and then still fight for &^%$#@! rankings for 10-20 hours week? My time is better spent on other engines.

[richardsaul]

fyi from webgravity
the inktomi paid inclusion service is one we are happy to offer, not only because it adds strength to our current product range(enabling deals such as the lycos.co.uk add url product offering);but also as a stand alone product

we spend our time putting together deals like the above, acquiring white labelled partners and pitching for large corporate positioning accounts such as BTGenie

we would not use the information for inktomi paid inclusion for commercial gain - we are a reseller of the service for the whole of europe and as such are launching thoughout in next two months.wuld not be appropriate for us to use the information in the file for our own purposes when positioning ourselves across europe with region specific products-our white labelled technology is used by other seo's in the uk and once these people start working with us they quickly realise that we are a technology company who do not put the emphasis on mass market end user sales

our pricing is now in line with the US which we are happy about as we were waiting for the new pricing to come into effect and it will remain so across europe

if any of you wish to contact me then feel free at [e-mail]

[oLeon]

<The first page jumped 33% in cost
<The second 100 stayed the same
<The next 900 pages jumped 40%

no,
the first jumped 50% ($20 to $30), and the other ones jumped 66% = $6 to $10, thatīs $4, and thatīs 66% of $6!

unbelievable pricing, unacceptable communication to the customers (us)

[Laisha]

While I agree that the communication was basically non-existent, AFAICT, it certainly makes sense to me that they would raise their price for the first page.

If you read the other boards, you can see that there is a trend to register only the main URL. This is, admittedly, mostly the more amateur-type boards, but I would guess that non-SEOs make up the bulk of the subscribers.

At any rate, if I were in the subscription business, I imagine that I would up that page as well. While it may seem a steep price increase, it is certainly a far better "deal" than a submission fee which promises only to review the page, limits the number of pages, and supplies whatever description the people you just paid decide to give it.

I still rely far more heavily on Inktomi subscriptions than most SEOs, I think, but as I said, it seems to me that it provides more bang for the buck. :)

[JamesR]

After trial of this service since its inception, I have found that the Inktomi engines give hardly any traffic at all [webmasterworld.com...] comparitively. It seems most want their sites listed on Ink. merely for seeing their listings show up on searches for ego sake (I admit I go for that sometimes) rather than the real traffic value. I personally conclude that Inktomi is just not worth it, spend your money at Goto.com. If anyone has gotten a good return from this, I would like to hear it. I am afraid the emperor isn't wearing any clothes.

[BoneHeadicus]

I haven't ever played the pay game and I honestly don't see much traffic from ink anyway. I think the money is better spent at Look$mart. Hot bot is a prime example of poor design in a search engine and the results are bizarre most of the time. I have given up trying to optimize for ink in any great detail. Actually I get more trafic from Slurp than the engines they support ( 3 or times every day) hitting the robots and root....thats as far as it ever goes. With 400 + pages behind root, all of which are carefully constructed, I have to wonder about the clairvoyant powers of Slurp.

All said and done to me ink is a has been.

[miles]

I see eye to eye with Brett. I have a customer I have spent money on for inktomi listings and the site doesnt even come up in the to 200 in any Ink based engines. I am tired of paying for results that are not there. The other day I checked my access log and I had so many hits from PT and Slurp it took 20 seconds or so to scroll down through all of the hits and it was just a bug. I dont see why PT has jumped for their service when it really needs to be improved.

Boneheadicus has a good point spend your money on Looksmart and that way you know you will see some listings. Or even Yahoo (web sites) use discretion on sponsored listings.

[makemetop]

My 2c -

I think it so much depends on who you are targetting and where. The client sites I have put in to Inktomi really have done well but I've carefully gone for phrases which are researched from looking at traffic from my GoTo listings and choosing those phrases which produce revenue-earning traffic but have few or no directory entries to bury the results. I consistently get top 10 rankings (at the moment) so this process has worked extremely well and while not buried under a zillion referrals a day, every day my clients get solid visits which can convert more easily in to sales and it continues day after day. So, it can work but like anything else - it ain't for everyone!

[Laisha]

>Hot bot is a prime example of poor design in a search engine and the results are bizarre most of the time.

The internal combustion engine is also a very inefficient method to use for transportation. Unfortunately, it is the most popular type of car, so we have to live with it.

HotBot is a major player -- hell, Inktomi is a major supplier of data to major players.

That being the case, I think it would be doing clients a disservice to ignore their subscription.

>I think the money is better spent at Look$mart.

I don't see it as an either/or situation. All the P2P and PPC entities seem to dovetail nicely. I wouldn't dream of excluding any one of them but recommend them almost as a package.

[Marshall Clark]

I've haven't been keeping track lately - who's still using Ink data?

[luckynh]

>Hot bot is a prime example of poor design in a search engine and the results are bizarre most of the time.

When 1st introduced to the PTI pay-for-play I thought it was a great idea.
I had just launched a new site and knew that I would have all I could do to get it into INK.

After paying the first $20 i got the site submitted.
I then watched this page very closely to see how it ranked. Knowing that I could change it and get it re-ranked every 48hrs.

It took a few day but this site rose from non-existing to 39 to 19 within the first week.
So I thought GREAT Yippee Hooray for me. Now just leave it along and watch the traffic roll right in

NOT!! I thought that I could get it even higher if I researched the competing sites to see how they differed from mine, and then tried to match then the best I could.

A little tweak here and there and "voila" I would be right there on top

So yesterday I looked at the SERP for this site and poof here is what I found

There I was on page 3 #26

26. [MYSITE.com...]

1/1/1970 [MYSITE.com...]
See results from this site only.

The funny thing is 1
My title was Changed
My description was GONE
The date 1/1/1970 ???? 1970 where did that come from??

So Is the PT a good solution for a hotbot listing? we'll have to see.
I think they still need to work out their bugs until they can justify a price increase.

[Laisha]

>My title was Changed
My description was GONE
The date 1/1/1970 ???? 1970 where did that come from??

You may have already found this thread [webmasterworld.com], but just in case you haven't, click here [webmasterworld.com].