Update Inktomi Survey

Is inktomi paid inclusion worth it?

[JoeHouse]

Hello all

Bringing in the new year I like to bring back a very interesting survey conducted by SlyGuy a while backing regarding Inktomi paid inclusion.

With all the changes inktomi has gone through I would like to know if paid inclusion is worth it for ecommerce businesses in regards to traffic and increased ROI.

I would like you all to add just one more repsonse to this survey and that is can you please include your increase in sales for those of you who have signed up with inktomi paid inclusion. I would like to have your results both in dollar sales and number of sales per day after inclusion.

Be as detailed as possible.

I invite all to join in on this survey.

Here is SlyGuy earlier survey:

So here goes:

Currently, my situation with inktomi is:

- (A) PAID and results are doing well
- (B) PAID and results vary (some good, some not so good)
- (C) PAID and results are doing poorly
- (D) FREE and results are doing well
- (E) FREE and results vary
- (F) FREE and results are doing poorly
- (G) Still waiting......

Please mention if your FREE listing disappeared when you paid or if you will re-new your PAID listings.

Thanks,

[Essex_boy]

A and D for me.

I was ver reluctant to use it on a pay for inclusion basis as I beleive this goes against the ethos of the web, however, Its been well worth it.

[CygnusX1]

A and D for me also. I couldn't be happier about the results I get.

CygnusX1

[Sunshyn]

C and E for me. I spent some time testing how a couple paid pages worked for my site. I paid for more pages, and they promptly changed their system so that I might as well not have paid at all.

[Marcia]

{D} for me right now and (A) in the past. But I need more pages in, and have a whole new site to decide for that needs inclusion as quickly as possible.

I've definitely found paid pages to be worthwhile to do, the only hesitation is the uncertainty whether paying for some pages will have anything to do with whether other pages on the site will still be indexed eventually without having to pay for all of them.

>>they promptly changed their system so that I might as well not have paid at all.

I've got free pages in there doing fine but they've changed and really need the listings updated. One says "summer" in the title and could be discouraging clicks this time of year. The ability to change some pages seasonally when necessary with PFI pages is definite plus, but overall for now that site wouldn't be worth having to pay for all the pages, most of which will stay the same.

[edited by: Marcia at 12:21 am (utc) on Jan. 2, 2004]

[JoeHouse]

what are the start up costs and the cpc rates?

[Marcia]

Joe, there's no startup or CPC on individual pages with the simple paid submit. It's $39 for the first page on a domain and $25 for each page after, and that's a one-time flat fee for a full year.

[Dreamquick]

Side question - do you find that using Ink PFI for a few key pages tends to get the entire site crawled & listed any faster than it would normally, or do they just religiously stick to the pages you've PFI'd and pick the others up when they feel like it?

- Tony

[JoeHouse]

How about index connect by inktomi? Has anyone used it? How does it perform? Whats the cpc and startup for this?

If things do not go well with ROI and you can't afford the cost can you cancel at anytime or are you lock in for a certain period of time?

Thanks!

[sabai]

I did PFI inktomi on a few new sites - unrelated commercial sites with a fairly small market in each case... did a few pages pages of PFI inktomi for each and made the money back after the first few days of being listed. We get a great conversion rate from our MSN guests too.

The sites are now getting a free listing in inktomi, had a small fear that we wouldn't get into the unpaid listings having done PFI, but there we are.

Is PFI inktomi worth it? On a new site, if you are part of a small market (small number of searches) then you will stand a good chance of getting in the top ten and so yes, it is worth it.

However, now that the sites have free listings, I won't be doing any more PFI inktomi...

[kanetrain]

(c) for me.

I've had terrible results with PFI. I put in 2 pages and they both disapeared completely from the Inktomi database. They were indexed for free before, but as soon as I signed up for PFI, they were immediately dropped completely from the SERPS.

I would very strongly recommend that you stay far away from PFI until Inktomi gets things figured out and stops randomly dropping PFI pages from the Index.

Once they work out the bugs... it has the potential to be a good program... but quite frankly, it's just WAY WAY to dangerous to risk your site with PFI right now.

[sabai]

kanetrain - One thing I would recommend doing when paying for a page to be included is to include it as
pagename.html?x=y - inktomi classes it as a different page to pagename.html and won't drop it from the free database - bonus is that you can track the incoming hits precisely too.

There are problems with inktomi, I have seen my PFI pages drop right down in the SERPS - certainly that did appear to be some kind of bug...

The question - is it worth it? For me it paid for itself in a very short period of time and continues to make money, so for me it was certainly worth it.

[sabai]

Side question - do you find that using Ink PFI for a few key pages tends to get the entire site crawled & listed

Absolutely not Dreamquick - in my experience doing PFI and getting spidered are two completely independent events.

[anallawalla]

- (D) FREE and results are doing well

I don't have many pages to worry about.

[928s4]

A and D for me. PFI is great for tweaking a new site, and my clients enjoy seeing their new site in the MSN SERPs hours after it's lauched. Now if my PFI providers could just get their act together...

[panic]

- (A) PAID and results are doing well

But my results could be just because I own so much. :D