Overture Site Match is LIVE!

[Warren]

Overture Site Match is now live on both the Overture site and various resellers.

Happened at 10:00pm New York time.

Wait for the press releases early tomorrow morning.

Warren

[Kirby]

>In other words, nobody should PFI unless they have over 50,000 pages and all those pages sell a product that costs over $3.

Good point steve. If there is a bump to the top with paid inclusion, it will only work with those that have the margin to play with. It really is a self limiting plan.

The success of Y! as a search engine hinges on the ability to crawl deep and wide and the integrity of the algo. This PFI plan makes me wonder if they doubt the ability of their crawler.

[webvisitor]

Exactly Hurliman. I believe Yahoo is looking to make money (a good thing for shareholders) and index their SERPs with relevant sites that aren't optimized beyond relevancy.
My people are going in no matter what. Given the industry as it is today things will change in a few months.

[Eljaybe]

This still doesn't provide a solution to site owners who paid to be listed in Inktomi before Yahoo announced it wasn't using Inktomi results anymore. I used PositionTech for PFI and I'm wondering if we all deserve a refund? After all, Yahoo provided much site traffic thru Inktomi listings. Now, do I drop PositionTech's service all together and just use Overture PFI?

[bonzodog]

I may be getting the wrong end of the stick, but I was always under the impression that the internet was meant to offer a worldwide network of resources , not as a way for companies to slowly merge removing the choice for the end user . let us all line the corporate pocket ..

[edited by: heini at 10:11 pm (utc) on Mar. 4, 2004]
[edit reason] TOS [/edit]

[Schoolbag]

So does the fact that Inktomi is no longer spidering my site every 2 days,according to my stats, mean that I can do a credit card charge back since I renewed in January?

[piconsulting]

This is very disapointing. The Paid inclusion would be great minus the pay-per-click. One of my travel clients recieved a modest 900 visits from Yahoo last month. That traffic would cost my client $270 this month if I put their main URLs in this program.

Why would I suggest that they do that?

I get a better cost-per-click on Overture, Google Ad Words, and Looksmart for this category. Plus in Overture and Google I have more control over keywords and a better ability to spread the traffic I buy evenly over a month.

The disapointing thing is that I have been pleased with the results of the Yahoo crawler so far. This just makes it totally bad news to explain to them. Plus I have to somehow explain to my clients why we didn't waste money when we were signed up for both the Inktomi and Altavista paid inclusion program. What am I supposed to tell them?

[AdriaK]

As far as I can see, there are two potential benefits to using SiteMatch. One, you get clickthrough tracking. Two, you get increased freshness. Now, I'm not willing to pay up to $0.30 per click for tracking that I'm already doing with log file analysis. And Inktomi's current crawling, as other posters have pointed out, is not so great.

One issue that I've had with Inktomi's crawling, that I haven't seen mentioned here yet, is that Slurp doesn't recognize the 301 "Permanently Moved" redirect. So if you want to move a website to a new domain name, the only way to get Inktomi to drop the old URL is to return a 404 code at the old domain. And guess what? That means that you don't get to keep the link cardinality benefits from websites that link to the old domain name. Everyone know how difficult it is to get people to update old URLs, so frankly, I think that this is a bad "feature" of Slurp. Google, of course, recognizes 301s and updates old URLs within a couple of days.

So why should I pay to include with a search engine that doesn't even handle the most basic of server codes in a rational, user-friendly way?

[bonzodog]

it would be nice if someone from either Ink or yahoo would explain why they are doing it . and give some level of the reason for the costs they are planning to charge

[simondev3]

Does anyone know for sure if MSN will be using site match/inktomi indexing? What is MSN's take on the whole site match fiasco? Has anyone gotten results using site match?

[debbiea]

I just filled out the Overture forms to see how much it would cost for 3 pages. $225. just to sign up. Then $.15 a click! I did not go through with the sign up.

[Warren]

"I just filled out the Overture forms to see how much it would cost for 3 pages. $225. just to sign up. Then $.15 a click! I did not go through with the sign up."

3 pages in the same domain/host are as follows:

1st URL: $49.00
2nd URL: $29.00
3rd URL: $29.00
Min Click Deposit: $50.00
Total: $157.00

However, for every different domain/host, you must pay the $49.00 and the $50.00 minimum click deposit.

Subdomains are considered seperate domains to their parent domain.

i.e. www.mydomain.com is one domain/host = $49 + $50
subdomain.mydomain.com is another totally different domain/host = $49 + $50

So the only way you could've gotten anywhere near $225.00 would've been to 1 host plus click desposit, 1 hosts plus click desposit and and additional URL.
ie. $49.00 + $50.00 = $ 99.00
$49.00 + $50.00 + $29 = $128.00
Total: $227.00

Warren

[jbgilbert]

Holy mackrel... Thanks for letting me know I will never be able to afford it.

[Warren]

The upfront costs are for an quality review.

When you compare the upfront costs to those previously charged, it is cheaper (albeit without the click thru costs) to get into Overture Site Match, than to be in Inktomi/Fast/AltaVista.

Just looking at Inktomi, which was a 2 Tier pricing structure ($39 for 1st, $25.00ea for 2 - 1000 URLs), and compare it to the Overture Site Match 3 Tier pricing stucture ($49 for 1, $29 for 2-10, $10 for 11plus), 14 or more URLs are cheaper to submit than previously. Plus you get the added benefit of Yahoo!, AV and Fast traffic.

Obviously you have click prices on top of this.

At the end of the day, if the program does provide significant value thru converting traffic, and you are making use of the features of the program (fast inclusion, regular refresh and reporting) than it will not be expensive. Rather it will become another cost to factor into your monthly budget. Consider PFI as a form of business insurance - that your site is listed in a search engine ensuring you get relevant traffic to your site. I spoke of this concept at Pub Conference.

Warren

[davidwarmuz]

For those that have asked...
Yes the new Site Match program covers MSN.

The resellers are just not allowed to use the MSN trademarked name in their promotions, at this present time.

Cheers
David

[outland88]

Those are pretty words Warren but your argument seems to say owning an automobile is cheap as long as you don’t buy gasoline, tires, etc. I agree with you though that PFI if working properly is good insurance. The problem is a third of the country is without even health insurance because costs have risen to high. As CNN stated Yahoo has put position for sale to the highest bidder. It wasn’t enough that these companies dominated everything else they want full control of the Internet. Which was bound to come.

The previous Ink program was a fixed cost or actual cost not a variable cost. Variable costs programs would appeal to entities selling products at high prices, in large quantities, or at low break even points. So I think we can narrow that list rather quickly. I can’t imagine though any company of enough size not wanting a guaranteed position with variable costs. If they got the guarantee and it was not made clear to the public it would be moving in to FTC territory.

Also the idea that quality couldn’t be influenced by money is a suspect one. Obviously with adult links costing 15 cents and health and beauty links costing 30 cents we can throw that arguement out the window.