Forum Moderators: open
the answer is - NO.
-- BECAUSE IT IS NOT FAIR AND NOT WORTH IT! --
The directory that is suitable for my listing has around 100 sites listed! And you still specially list 20 sites for the 'sponsored listing' + 'most popular sites'on top of this 100 sites.
1. Ask yourself, you want us to pay $299 EACH YEAR to list our site in a page that have more than 120 links! Do you think it worth? How many people will click on it. Don't forget you like to edit our title and description which usually end up no people are attracted to click on our link.
2. If they pay for the sponsor listing, I have nothing to say. BUT I don't understand how Yahoo choose the most popular sites where instead they are not popular, and are obsolete.
3. New site pay $299 Each Year for the listing, while old site DON'T NEED TO PAY A SINGLE CENT. If everybody need to pay, I won't say anything. Why can't you remove half of the sites that doesn't pay you. Then you can make more money because we are more willing to pay if there are fewer sites. OR ASK THEM TO PAY, they have earn some free years for listing.
Now you didn't return results of your directory in your search but google results instead. Your directory worth less!
Yahoo should 1. reduce the price 2. or make it one time fee 3. or remove half of the sites from the directories.
Sites that have attractive title and description will usually earn more clicks while site that does't attactive may hardly get a click in a month. AGREE MR/MS YAHOO?
Done right, imho, it can produce ROI for anybody - you just have to do it the right way. :)
No one has ever agreed with this but I've always thought Yahoo was a better link to have than ODP.
>>>2. If they pay for the sponsor listing, I have nothing to say. BUT I don't understand how Yahoo choose the most popular sites where instead they are not popular, and are obsolete.
Best as I can tell they pick the most popular sites by click pop...cuz all the sites in the cats I watch are filled with a guy I know for a fact runs a clickbot.
>>>>>3. New site pay $299 Each Year for the listing, while old site DON'T NEED TO PAY A SINGLE CENT. If everybody need to pay, I won't say anything. Why can't you remove half of the sites that doesn't pay you. Then you can make more money because we are more willing to pay if there are fewer sites. OR ASK THEM TO PAY, they have earn some free years for listing.
You're a year too late for the one time fee...thats just the way it is. At least they didn't screw up as bad as L$ did.
A directory listing is a kind of publicity, like a listing in the telephone directory or having items in the press release feeds. But if you want your listing (ad) to stand out from the others, you'll need to pay more for size or prominence. You may pay a lot of money for the press release distribution service but you may not get a single call from a reporter or a single mention in the next day's newspaper. And your competitor's enormous ad in the yellow pages may mean half your potential customers won't even bother to turn the page.
there are lots of issues like this, but you just have to bite your lip and play the game.
You deliver me the amount of traffic that my $299 yearly fee brings me in a week..... and I will pay YOU $299 EVERY week (not year)
Shak
Larry
Yahoo was a better link to have than ODP
Yahoo directory would send you far more referrers than ODP would.
Damn you are right man! why pay $ 299.00 to yahoo.
In asian country like india. where a good site can be made and hosted in $299.00 if we pay google or yahoo the 299.00
just imagine what we will be asking our clients= $600.00
in India 600 dollers means = 50x600 =Rs.30,000 that is unimaginable in India's context.think we have to include the sites in other engines too.
Yes, In case they can do they reduce upto 10$ a year... I think most of the people will appericiate the move and quite likely yahoo/google will benefit from the rush.
Cost Per Click in Asian region has no taker,,,, so google and yahoo lose its value and concept there.As asian countries are getting much better in thier www technologies and the boom in market over here can give yahoo google good amount of business.
maybe they think of something else before sombody here takes the advantage as indiatimes.com is doing a fine job over here.
Regards & best wishes for new year......
Prince from India
:-)
What about paying $10.00 to yahoo/google ;-)
Finally someone agree to me. Yeah, at least we are both from asia. $299 x 4 == RM 1200 wowwwwww, when I work as a supermarket promoter from 10 moring to 10 night (full day), after 30 days, I only get $700 ... :(
Yahoo Listing --> Nahhhh .... I better put the money in pay per click program.
I agree that for a startup with little capital, the rules can be onerous, but like others have said, in a capitalist society, money talks, it doesn't have to be fair, just pay the money to get the benefit...
Furthermore, the fairness for the "grandfathered" listings can be justified in that as the web has grown much larger and become more competitive, you have to pay more today to get started. In other words, I would argue that it is fair for those who came in early to have that benefit and newer to the business to pay their "dues" in a more mature marketplace...just my opinion though!
Now it is $299, the ROI will be negative.
I am listed in some categories with 100+ sites and the click-thru rate is roughly 60-100 per day. So, your mileage may vary.
I have to agree with scorpion, shakil and others that the benefits far outweigh the cost! You mention that you are going to do PPC. How long do you think your $299 is going to last? With the paid submission, you will have a site listed in Y! as well as helping your PR in Google. Not to mention who knows what Y! is going to do with INK. So I would definitly recommend biting the bullet and submit your site to Y!
Pay 299? Can, at least you have longer and better title that can rank higher and pull attention of the visitor when they school down the 100+ links in the page. Else, really don't expect to get a single click.
1. Even if there isn't a massive amount of traffic, $299 for 1 year is not bad as compared to PPC's where you would spend that much money quicker
2. If you have a good title and description, it may be worth it because it'll increase your chance of getting some miscellaneous traffic. If you don't, it might be hard to get any clicks.
3. Something that hasn't been mentioned - what category you're listed in. I have a couple of sites getting decent traffic because they are listed at the top of high end categories. People find them by browsing through the directory, not with keyword searches.
4. Also, the category and how many sites listed may have an effect on Google Page Rank.
As a result, what I am doing is:
1. When submitting new sites, I check the category, how many sites listed, and the keyword - if there are few sites in the category and the keyword isn't too competitive, I submit.
2. For renewals, I always check stats to determine how many referrals came from Yahoo. Thanks to steve and gsmitchell's posts, I've decided to lower the bar and renew sites that have gotten a few hits. I wasn't going to renew most of them, but I'm reconsidering now.
Any other thouhgts?
[webmasterworld.com...]
I would prefer the 'misc clicks' with a better title and description. But for Google PR, I don't think he can do much for a page with 100+ links.
I have registered with Yahoo Directory for free, but you need to choose a non-commercial directory (commercial directory costs $299, and it is not worthed!)
Here is an example:
If I want to submit mydomain.com to yahoo, I will choose the an appropriate directory on Yahoo:
Regional/Countries/Germany/Computers and Internet/Software
There is a link called 'Suggest a Site' on the bottom right corner of that page, please click on that and you will have two options "Yahoo! Express' and 'Standard'. Click on Suggest via 'Standard Consideration' and then on 'Continue' button. You will be asked to fill out about your Site and Contact Information.
Go to this link and you can see what I mean:
[add.yahoo.com...]
That's all you need to register with Yahoo Directory Listing for free with non-commercial directory. Again, it will take 6 to 8 weeks to get in.
I would suggest to register with Google since it bring a lot of traffic! You need to have proper Meta Tag on every page in order for it to index! Also, Google search result will be populated to Yahoo Japan too.
I have never pay any $ for advertising or search engine submission at all.
Here is my statistic within a day on January 05, 2003
Rank Search Server(s) Accesses %
1 Google 507 52.27
2 Yahoo 415 42.78
3 MSN 32 3.30
4 Excite 12 1.24
5 AOL NetFind 3 0.31
6 InfoSeek 1 0.10
Regards,
Bn
I never understood the logic of what Yahoo was doing with that move -- and I also wish they'd change back since I'm #2 for my single keyword in Yahoo but only #10 in Google. I used to get much more traffic from Yahoo, but now it's similar to Google.
Because most people are not all people. Why would anybody want to show up in MSN if most people search with Google? Same answer.
Yahoo gives good ROI for some of our customers, so we pay.
Others, where we expect the ROI is not likely to be good, we don't pay.
It works for some and not for others, depending on the market and keyphrases you are targeting.
That we have different opinions on this is to be expected, yes?
1) Many businesses can't afford to hire a pro, or take that time to research how to build traffic as inexpensively as possible. As many mentioned there's other ways less expensive to get traffic and those seems second nature to you or I, but how many regular site owners know about those methods? I'd argue that for the average site $299yr for a listing in the Yahoo directory is still going to send them more traffic most methods. As a site owner (especially if I'm just getting started) I'd rather plop down $299 and be happy to get some good traffic and link pop than spend time researching the finer details of SEO/SEM (reading a forum!?) when my time could be better spent elsewhere.
2) Don't forget competition. If your site is for a business and your competition is in Yahoo, you should be too. This one can easily be argued either way, but Yahoo is still one of the biggest most important sites on the web and you don't want your clients to find your competitor there and not you.
3) People still use the directory heavily and your Google listings don't show up there. At SES San Jose I attended the session Search Engines and Users and the Yahoo! rep said they have 4 types of users: Those that search then browse the directory, those that search, those that search then browse, and those that browse then search. Notice all that browsing going on? Granted,that with the recent improvements in the search results there will likely be a little less browsing going on, but I still don't want to miss out on it just to save $299yr.
4) Don't overlook your target audience. If you sell more to Yahoo users you need to be there in the directory, and search results. This hit home with me on the switch to Google. I work on a site that has literally hundreds of top listings in Google and has a few with a decent directory listing at Yahoo. Due to the switch to Google results we've seen orders just about double. Since the listings are essentially identical to what we've had at Google for a long time this tells me that we have a strong audience at Yahoo. Knowing this we'll now be placing more advertising at Yahoo, but if we hadn't already had a directory listing that would have been the first thing I'd do.
5) Don't forget the ever changing landscape. For all we know, Yahoo could buy Google tomorrow and switch it to pure directory listings (ok, so they got Ink instead!). Unlikely, but who knows? One rule I've followed is to make sure you have a decent presence with all the major players so when the landscape switches, like it always does, you don't get bit in the ass, and since 1996 my ass has been fine!
-Craig
been here twice and it seems that the group is getting stornger and stronger and good views and reviews are being discussed.
just , i want to say keep up the good work.
and get a better way get listed in major search engines.
few days back , i submitted some sites in few engines like
yahoo, google, msn, alltheweb and others. And since i sit on net 16 hours daily. I found that alltheweb and other not so imp. engines index thier database every fortnight. I place a good bet that the small engines can also produce good results. Even the altavista index was very fast when i went to check my listing.
till my site gets listed on yahoo, and google,msn.
regards and keep posting.
:-)
