AH-HA and Infospace Developing Paid Inclusion Program

[rubble88]

From the announcement,

"Planned to launch within the next few weeks, the Paid Inclusion program will provide participating Web site owners with the ability to promote their sites within meta-search results InfoSpace delivers to a number of Web search properties, including Excite ( www.excite.com), as well as InfoSpace's network of search sites, including Dogpile ( www.dogpile.com), WebCrawler ( www.webcrawler.com), MetaCrawler ( www.metacrawler.com) and InfoSpace ( www.infospace.com), among others"

Complete announcement,
[library.northernlight.com ]

[heini]

Interesting. So how does a meta engine set up a PFI programme?
It's easy enough with a PPC, where the paid listing just appear on top/bottom/side of the serps, but where does a meta engine place PFI listings? How to rank them?

[redzone]

From what my partner discussed w/ InfoSpace at San Jose SES, the PFI results are going to appear, below the Overture results.

Currently, Dogpile and metacrawler.com are Infospace's two most visited portals.

We couldn't get much info out of them yet as to "how far down the page", the PFI results are going to be.

They did say this week, that their PFI by URL would be live soon, but their PPC PFI program is not ready yet.

[GoogleGuy]

Any other interesting tidbits from the conference?

[redzone]

FAST delaying XML inclusion program start date until at least Sep. 9th..

Yahoo wasn't even at the conference. What kind of message is that sending? :)

What is interesting about the Ah-Ha/Infospace deal, is the fact that Infospace has relied on Overture for the majority of their rev's over the past 9 months. With a PFI and PPC program of their own in the wings, if the rev's generated from these new programs outpace the rev share split with Overture, it could mean that Overture loses yet another distribution partner.

The Lycos announcement could have huge impact, possibly more in the "Non US" markets, than in the US, as Lycos/Hotbot don't have the market share, they did a couple of years ago.

But when you combine Infospace and Lycos' portal properties, that accounts for:

Dogpile.com, Excite.com, Hotbot.com, Lycos.com, Metacrawler.com, and Webcrawler.com.

These portals combined, still generate some decent search numbers. Overture stands the chance of losing them all.

While MSN/AV/Yahoo still generate adequate market penetration for Overture, the individual responsible for contracting these distribution channels has left the company, and moved on to "greener" pastures. Always better for the resume' to move on, while you are still on top? :)

[jeremy goodrich]

Yahoo wasn't even at the conference. What kind of message is that sending?

I would swear I saw a couple of people with Yahoo! name tags :) I guess you are refering to their lack of a booth? Hm...seems like those were mostly for people that wanted to sell advertising like PFI or PPC XML.

So that begs the question: why is it that Google had a booth? Guess that means they want to do one of the above...

Any other interesting tidbits from the conference?

Everybody said that the real info is at the Pub Conference '02 [pubconference.com]. Lot's of people I met nodded their heads when I mentioned WebmasterWorld - I guess that's news to some, isn't it?

And anybody who posts here would have been recognized within a second by all the companies there...looks like this place is very, very famous.

Honest ;0

[WebGuerrilla]

Yahoo wasn't even at the conference.

I did a panel with a Yahoo rep, so there was at least one person there. Typically, when a Yahoo rep is done speaking, they run and hide because they get hammered with a lot of angry questions. My guess there was a car in the back with the motor running waiting for her....