Ink goes Pay Per Click...

[NFFC]

"Index Connect is also designed to incur revenue streams for its members as content publishers are charged a fee each time a user accesses their Web page through one of the Inktomi Index Connect network portals"

Article here [internetnews.com]

[rcjordan]

For sites over 1000 pages (I'll pass)

Current Index Connect content partners and participants include eBay, Epinions Inc., IDG, KQED Public Broadcasting, LAUNCH Media Inc., LookSmart, eLuminator, RollingStone.com, The Hunger Project and Virage.

[littleman]

[inktomi.com...]

[littleman]

This might be why the positiontech stuff is now buried

[jilly]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this reads like the same thing that the paid pages are supposed to do, doesn't it? Or are they going to optimize our pages for us now too? ;) Only now they get to charge us more? I'm sure I've missed something, right?

[littleman]

Jilly - I believe this is now ppc.

[littleman]

On November 4th of last year I wrote this:

I hate this. How is inktomi going to be able to call themselves a search engine anymore? It is now little more than a pay for placement directory with a pseudo spider algo thrown in to make it look like something more. So, why would anyone use Ink now? If you want a pay for placement engine why not use Goto? At least goto is not playing games, and pretending to be a non biased search engine. And
speaking of Ink portals, why would any of them stay with ink now? They could start their own pay for submission schemes.

And what about Grandma's site about growing flowers, no one will ever see it because the hobbyist will not fork out the cash for inclusion. Inktomi's index will look like a pile of infomercials. Why would a portal pay for that?

Jimmy6 you are right.
[webmasterworld.com...]

I'm going to protest this one - others should do the same. Carry the logic of this out and go a couple of years into the future and Ink's move is the first nail in the coffin. If this succeeds every major portal will eventually go the pay for placement route. The art of SEO will be obsolete, and the spidering search engine will be a relic.

Yeah, I know it is a rant, everybody should be ranting..

I still feel the same way, sort of...
I guess the difference now is that it is like fighting an old man with one foot in the grave.

[stcrim]

Well, I've read it cover to cover and one question remains - well a lot of questions. Are these people going to have to optimize their pages or will they be put ahead of those of us who have paid at Position Tech because the are paying per traffic??? Is the playing field level?

Is INKTOMI becoming the new GOTO??? Wouldn't the directory listings be the best target since they are in the positions we all want anyway.

And what was the close of INKTOMI's stock today???

-s-

[jilly]

Steve:

Are we having fun yet? ;) I have been trying to figure out why the pages I've paid for are not only buried but missing from the database at this point. This news makes me think that we're going to take the "back-back" seat in Inktomi unless we pay per click. I'm unhappy to say the least.

[makemetop]

>This might be why the positiontech stuff is now buried...

My PT pages are still ranking high - but now I'm worried! Does this 'full leverage of your meta data' mean that big sites can whack in any keywords they like and rank higher than us because they are now PPC? Yikes! And what about the Looksmart partnership?

I'm very confused.

[Boaz]

" Index Connect "does potentially have an impact on the index, with more content coming from paying clients," Toman said. "But our results and relevance algorithms are exactly the same. This is paid inclusion, giving sites the opportunity to be considered for a search. But we are still very democratic when we select search results.""
if Toman is on the level, then nothing really has changed. All he's saying is that if you have more than a thousand pages to submit, you'll have to pay per click as well (similar to LookSmart's ppc for sites that want more than 5 pages in their directory).

" Inktomi last year introduced Search/Submit, which lets sites pay to be searched on a regular basis. But that service--which Toman described as "hugely successful"--was aimed at smaller sites, or those submitting fewer than 1,000 Web page addresses. Index Connect is designed to offer a similar service to the large sites. "