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I was hoping by now I would see some change - but notta. I know with the new purchase of Inktomi that this may be a super bonus for the directory listings. But my sites have received about 70% less traffic since the yahoo switch. I could not afford to fork out $600 to yahoo - I'd rather pay to get into some of the other SEs at this point. My yahoo listing have done ZERO for my Google rankings.
I'm just hoping something changes soon. I really don't want to cancel my listings in yahoo. But they are leaving with no choice right now.
Anyone else canceling? If you want to get into your account to view all of your recurring site fees, you can simply go into the directory, and click any category. Then you click on submit site. To the left, they'll be a link that says something like "Manage Listings". Then you click on that and from there you can view all of your listing along with renewal dates. And if you choice to cancel, it's very simple, you just click on "How do I cancel?" in the top right hand side and it'll have a button to cancel. Just thought this would be usesful information.
I'm not renewing either. There's simply no benefit. There isn't a significant PR boost - plus my guess is that with Yahoo buying Ink, Google will devalue Yahoo links even more.
As to traffic, most of my sites are getting very little traffic from the Yahoo directory. There are a couple that are "Popular" or at the top of the category that DO get some traffic, but 90% of them don't get much.
Like you, I also think that cash would be better invested elsewhere.
For instance?
There are ways of course to get free traffic, but what better deal is there than .80 a day? I just shake my head at these posts. It's a no brainer to see how many clicks you get a day from the directory, divide that into eighty cents and see how it compares with Overture or Ad Words or whatever. For almost everybody the directory will be a huge bargain, not counting the fact that the PR for many categories is decent. Some competitive spam sites get their *entire* PR from the yahoo directory.
I guess you could cancel those sites that don't give you a return and re-submit if things change (hopefully at the same price).
No matter how you slice it, when I see that .80 yielding about 80% less in revenue, I just can't see it happening. Yahoo's reliability is down the drain. I have close to $30,000 a year tied up in Yahoo, and the traffic just isn't happening.
ROI...? Well, I guess I got my year's worth, but I don't see it coming again this year, and based on the current Yahoo model, and I don't want to spend thousands again to "wait and see". That's not my idea of stability, reliability or good customer service. Yahoo can kiss my money ba-bye unless I see a serious contract in place (like getting rid of their current model) and a considerably better commitment to customer service, which is world-class lousy.
While they're figuring out who they are and what they're going to do with their business and their results, I'm going to spend my money elsewhere (anywhere that is more reliable!). You think optimizing for Google's AdWords isn't such a good idea, but I'm here to say that at least you get what you pay for - no monkeying around and calling it "Reviews", when we all know it means targeted traffic. No major changes right before the busy holiday season. No "F...Y.." attitude when I need to talk to an editor who just trashed my description for no apparent reason. At least with Google's AdWords I have control over my own traffic, and Google is more reliable and more widely used than Yahoo (just ask the folks at Yahoo! - even they seem to think so).
You don't get your .80-a-day's worth out of Yahoo anymore. Just ask everyone who spent the money. I haven't heard of one person who is doing better with what used to be a good listing in Yahoo (unless they're in Google, which doesn't means it doesn't matter if they're in Yahoo anyway).
~Pink
Of course people do. The more URLs you manage the better a deal it is if it cost effective. The posts that say "we only get two clicks", well great don't renew, but the posts that say "70% less spend money elsewhere" are obviously missing the point by a country mile. Who cares about "less"? That's irrelevant.
What matters is what you actually get. If by 70% less that means the difference between 10 and 3 clicks a month, well yeah, don't pay. But if it means the difference between 100 and 30 clicks a day, I can't imagine what business you are in that you could find somewhere else to pay less than three cents a click!
As long as you are in double digits a day for clicks I can't see how any sensible businessperson wouldn't see Yahoo as an outstanding bargain -- single digit click cost plus some PR. You go look everywhere and you wouldn't find many better places to spend money.
I think you are missing my point. Yahoo is not a reliable source of traffic anymore, and I am not willing to pay them again because of it. It's ridiculous to even think they are. They're stocks went up, but their service got worse. You sound foolish. 70-80% less traffic is a red flag for things to come. I wasn't getting 100 hits a day, I was getting 1,000's. That's when it was worth it. I'm in a very competitive business, and if Yahoo can't keep up, I won't hang around and keep paying them. I don't trust what they'll do next, and I have no idea why you do. Do you work for Yahoo or yourself? I will do what's best for my business, and Yahoo isn't a part of that anymore. The idea here is that very notion of ROI. I'm not in business to break even. I'm in business to make money.
~Pink
I too was very frustrated when Y! changed the default search (huge loss in traffic), but I can't believe you can't see that you are getting a ROI even if you are only getting a couple hundred clicks a day versus a couple thousand. You say you are in a very competitive category so your cpc on Adwords I imagine is high. For ease of math lets say you get 1000 clicks on adwords. And let's say you only pay .10 per click. That means you are going to spend $100/day for 1 keyword. So in 3 days you will have spent the same amount of money to renew for Y! for a year. I don't see how this adds up. I would say your ROI for renewing is a whole lot better then your ROI for Adwords!
And I just have one question to you: How much money were you spending submitting to the YAHOO directory every month before the change? Were you spending at least $1500 a month on yahoo submissions and getting 10 ofs 1,000s of hits a month? Or were you one of the people that just got "free traffic". Were you making at least $15 - $17K a month as a result of your yahoo traffic through paid submissions. If not, then you have NO CLUE as to what these post regarding the yahoo change is all about and why some people are so pissed off! NO CLUE. We are talking major loss of traffic and major loss of income when our advertising dollars spent in that directory were just freakin tossed aside like garbage.
We were one of those companies that was build around traffic from Yahoo - 1 good ranking for a top keyword would square us away for a while. So by comparison, Yahoo's performance is pretty cheesy now.
However, I totally see SteveB and Gsmitchell's point now - and I thank you both for pointing that out so clearly. You are right - even if there is very little traffic it'll be cheaper than most other places.
I was thinking of using that money to pay for a few INK submissions and perhaps a few Teoma and Fast submissions. But I think it's definitely worth reconsidering.
Jadakiss, even though the traffic is a lot less by comparison, I think it's a good point that it may still be money well spent.
One key point - before, if we only wanted to spend X amount of money in promotion, our first stop was Yahoo. That is not the case anymore. It is still worth it but I don't think the Yahoo listing will make or break a site anymore. It's good to have, but not essential.
If you want to get into your account to view all of your recurring site fees, you can simply go into the directory, and click any category. Then you click on submit site. To the left, they'll be a link that says something like "Manage Listings". Then you click on that and from there you can view all of your listing along with renewal dates.
Okay, I'm lost. This is not working for me...if I'm reading it right.
Never mind. I see what you mean.
80 clicks a day is a penny a click. You obviously haven't thought this through.
[edited by: steveb at 3:25 am (utc) on Jan. 6, 2003]
It's a simple question of how many clicks you get a day divided by eighty cents. That's it. If you are only getting one or two clicks, don't pay, but if you are getting over 15 then it is the best pay-value out there... less than a nickel a click plus page rank.
$299,- for a full year of being promoted. Being visible to 36.000 visitors (100 per day?).
Has any of you spoiled kids ever compared that to real world marketing costs?
A print-ad (full page - like full screen) easily costs $3.000 per month for a regional (not even national) industry magazine (targeted readers) published monthly with a circulation of 20.000.
Do the math, pay your $299 USD, be happy and hope Yahoo (and all the other cheap hustlers) never get serious!
IMHO you may have another year or two to cultivate your "I want it all, I want it now, and I want it for free! - mentality" before the real world really takes over the Internet and kill your dreams.
I have one site that is listed at the bottom of a category that has over 150 websites listed. In the year 2002, we got a total of 463 hits from Yahoo.
That site only had a total of 12 sales for the year 2002, including traffic from other sources.
This site did not recuperate the cost of the listing.
Obviously we have other sites that show a very different scenario, so it's essential to check.
I say: read the post again. That's not what it said.
I'm in the same boat with ONE of my "temporary" user names/passwords. Any ideas on how to approach the problem? I would hate to have to call them up and say something like "Hello, I forgot who I am..."
