Forum Moderators: open
Site Match delivers:
1. Higher quality search results for users, especially by reducing the amount of search spam (spammers are economically disincented to participate)
2. A clearer, more consistent way to interact with Yahoo! Search Technology for content providers who historically have been subjected to unpredictable changes in the way their content has been discovered and presented by search engines.
As we’ve said elsewhere, we think these benefits are of value to many businesses, and the considerable demand for the program we’ve seen thus far would seem to support that. However, the program may not be valuable to everyone. We understand this – not everyone wants or needs the value-added service that Site Match offers. And that’s OK, because it’s likely that we already have your web pages in the regular crawl, and if we don’t yet, then we are working on getting them in over time. Discovering and indexing all of the content on the internet for free is a cornerstone of our mission to provide the highest quality search experience on the internet.
Q. Will Yahoo! Search results favor sites that pay for the Site Match program?
A. Absolutely not. Payment is not for placement or ranking in search results. Our focus is on delivering the highest quality search experience on the web. As a result, all web pages are algorithmically ranked in the results based on their objective relevance to each specific search query in order to ensure the highest quality search experience for users.
Q. Will the Inktomi index be merged with the new Yahoo! index before Inktomi disappears?
A: Yes. Today there is a single, new Yahoo! Search Technology. This new search engine powers Yahoo! and will shortly also be powering the search solutions of all our partners. The search engines operated by the companies we acquired, including Inktomi, will no longer power our search results. Yahoo! Slurp, Yahoo!’s new crawler, is already reaching and indexing more of the web than any of our prior technologies did.
Q. If I participate in Site Match, will my site be “banned” from the search index?
A. No. The Site Match and crawling systems are separate (one doesn’t affect content in the other) and participation in Site Match does not result in changes to the index. For instance, if you submit 1 page to Site Match, other pages that may be in the regular index will not be affected.
However, content from both systems is reviewed and evaluated against the same criteria to ensure all content meets a consistent, high quality standard. If you joined the Inktomi Search Submit program, for example, you may have been reviewed. If problems were discovered, your site may have been partially or entirely removed from the search index. The same thing happens to sites that have been discovered through the free crawl process; if problems were discovered, your site may have been partially or entirely removed from the search index. Any review-related penalty is solely designed to ensure the best experience for our users, not to encourage ongoing participation in our inclusion programs.
For our new Site Match program, we’re considering providing content providers with a formal method way to appeal perceived penalties. Please stay tuned…
Q. Does Site Match require both a per-page, per-year fee and a cost-per-click?
A. Site Match has a much lower up-front cost (less than 1/3) than the 3 programs it replaces: Inktomi Search Submit, AltaVista Express Inclusion, and FAST PartnerSite PFI. One concern with the old programs was that some sites paid upfront and then got relatively few clicks (a common scenario for very specialist sites). This resulted in the service working out to be quite expensive on an effective cost-per-click basis. The new cost-per-click pricing is more equitable in that it scales with the value the program provides to each participating site. In addition, we offer a range of budgeting options that allow content providers to cap their spend at whatever levels they are comfortable with. Finally, and most importantly, cost-per-click pricing helps ensure a high quality user experience. Cost-per-click pricing motivates content providers to submit only relevant content (no one wants to pay for an irrelevant click), further improving the quality of the search experience for users. Without CPC pricing, content providers have no incentive to provide high quality content and avoid gaming the system.
Q. What concerns me with the new Yahoo! PFI system is a lack of geotargetting. With the current Inktomi PFI, if someone outside my intended area clicks on my page in the SERPs, I don't care - I pay no extra for that. It's just a free click. I currently receive about 15% of clicks from countries I don't do business in.
= Q. Does Site Match allow URLs to be targeted to specific countries?
A. Yes. In fact, Site Match does support geotargeting. Through the Overture-branded system, just log in (after subscribing) and go to View/Edit URLs. Click Edit for each URL and you’ll see options to target by region or by country. This is another feature that helps us deliver a higher quality user experience. In the example cite by this post, the user actually would have had a suboptimal experience – they clicked on the page of a business that couldn’t address their need. By offering geo-targeting we enable content providers help make both their experience and the experience of the user better. This is another example of how we are leveraging this program to help us deliver the highest quality user experience.
Time to fold this thread IMO - or at least move it from recent posts.
We've all got the point from the people who are complaining. Do we have to go through it again and again and again?
My last comment in this thread!
Speaking for me, I know by sure, that google will ever ban or penalize my site, though there is nothing to penalize, maybe they will change their algo, and I will lose position, but exclude my site, ever..
So If Yahoo want´s to make me choose between Yahoo or google I stay with Google.
[edited by: helenp at 9:47 pm (utc) on Mar. 14, 2004]
We've all got the point from the people who are complaining. Do we have to go through it again and again and again?
It´s very easy to say, I understand one of my clients to whom this happends by my fault, if you are the SEO,
but that doesn´t make your business fall, ie, you still earns the same.........
BTW, Editorial at Yahoo tends to be a lot harder on affiliate sites than Google.
Good point Tim
Maybe they need to relax a little, as has been said, the inclusion of certainly hasn't damaged google :)
I think it might help the debate if you could possibly give us your view on what exactly constitutes an 'affiliate site' in the sense of not being welcome, or perceived to be of no use to Y! visitors.
The Y!ndex is full of sites that make affiliate sales.
Some are very good indeed, in terms of adding excellent value and use to the consumer, either by way of supplementing the products that they promote with additioanl information that assists the site user in making a more informed judgement, others add value simply in terms of usability. A site might be far better structured, or offer better tools and services that again, assist the user in reaching an overall objective.
Isn't it a little unfair to make a judgement that because a site primarily exists to drive sales of, or promote the interests of a 3rd party that it should in some way be looked down upon as an inferior resource not 'worthy' of inclusion?
Some aff sites are just plain old crap, sure Im not disputing that, and others are making big strides to improve upon what they do.
IMO, those that excel and maybe those that are trying to, deserve a little more slack. Let the consumer make the decision. A good algo, (like Googles) does a pretty good job of delivering useful relevant content, without a need for excessive human intervention on weeding out sites trying to earn a bob or two. If it was such a stinky model, people would have left it in droves, why cant Y! learn from that fact?
Thank you.
I tried asking this in another thread, but for some reason it seems I can not get a straight forward answer.
About 10 days ago Yahoo came up with a free submit option for their new search engine.
Lets say an url that has never been in any search engine before, was submitted today.
When would this url be indexed?
Can someone please just answer my simple question in plain language.
Thank You,
Dan
Yahoo would be banned from Yahoo!
Anyone who ran a site that had the characterisitcs of Yahoo would be banned from the engine. It has very little orginal content and is dominated by advertising.
I'm not sure anyone can give you a straight answer on this. It may be indexed very quickly (within a few days) if you have some quality links pointing to your site, if you don't you may never get indexed.
How long do you expect it to take to spider sites who use the free add url?
How long do you expect before sites that are poorly crawled now, say 10% of their pages now in the index, will have 99% of their pages in the index?
Aside from fixing blatantly mistaken penalties, this is the service Yahoo should be working on diligently.
He did.
>>My last comment in this thread!
Thank you.
Actually, its a shame that its his last post in this thread. makemetop is an expert in PFI inclusion programs and I for one value his insight greatly. Perhaps if the rhetoric was toned down just a touch, we might find that more members with the kind of insight MMT has would participate.
If Y! chooses not to answer certain questions, your answer probably lies in the silence. In helping to keep the thread readable, It is not necesary to keep asking the same thing over and over, OK?
It´s very dificult to understand the silence, that leaves you to your imagination.........
About Makemetop, I know that, but a person that said, that it´s works perfect for 95% of his clients, that don´t make me feel better if I am one of that 5%.
For me it´s works bad for an 100%.
It´s very hard what is happening to several persons, I am just pissed of, I only have one job, and that is falling, and I do not consider my self any spammer.
Please understand the pain of other people.
[washingtonpost.com...]
They got to clever for their own good by trying to turn natural search results into a revenue stream.
My previous comment was more of a tongue-in-cheek, funny, sarcastic remark rather than anything personal. Thought it was cute to say that, nothing else.
Ta
Best estimates from a layperson
Longer than it would take at gigablast and less
time than it would take for a heavy commercial
cat at dmoz
8^)
In light of what you mentioned and what others are saying about Affiliate marketing. I bring you the following:
[travel.yahoo.com...]
Take a look at their huge Affiliate Ad.
--- Let me clarify, at times when you go there, you get a large Hotels.com ad, similar to what you'll find on many affiliate sites on the Web.
Basically, it's: "DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO"
A couple of questions recently posted by steveB related to time to crawl URLs
Q: How long do you expect it to take to spider sites who use the free add url?
A: It can take up to several weeks before your URL is crawled. This is stated on the free site submission page at:
Q: How long do you expect before sites that are poorly crawled now, say 10% of their pages now in the index, will have 99% of their pages in the index?
A: There is no single answer to this question. It can depend largely on the design of your site. For example, there are some pages that currently won't be effectively crawled by any search engine. Examples include:
- Pages that use Flash for navigation
- Pages that use graphics for navigation without providing information that is crawler friendly such as good alt-tags or including text navigation along with the graphics
- Dynamic pages (like catalogs)
Even pages that load slowly can impeded the crawling of your site because the spiders can only allocate a certain amount of time to each site.
These are just a few examples, but of course the list goes on.
If you asking when will search engines effectively crawl 99%+ of content on the web, that's a bigger question. Certainly Yahoo! and other SE are always striving to provide a better more comprehensive index of the web. This is a main focus of Yahoo!'s research and development efforts.
A previous poster asked if large companies will have advantages in the Yahoo database not offered to others. Specifically, the ability to tweak their listings to gain advantage over the smaller advertisers
The answer is no.
It is true that one of the benefits of the Site Match program is that when you modify your web pages or feeds, you can quickly see the results of those modifications--your site can be crawled every 48 hours. Larger customers also have dedicated account managers that can help them drive the most qualified leads possible.
So, large or small customers participating in Site Match can more quickly see the results of their modifications.
However Site Match participants do not receive any ranking adjustment (as compared to free crawled content) based on payment: all content is ranked based on relevance to specific search terms.
Forget about that.
I'm asking about a site that should be easily, normally, no problem, seen by Yahoo. I'm talking about the mass of sites people here would create. I'm talking about the type of sites that Google will crawl 100% of within one month.
Yahoo has no track record on this. Inktomi was simply pathetic at this. What people would like to know is when will Yahoo crawl through the links it sees instead of choosing not to. Every other discussion here is dependant on an assumption that Yahoo will free crawl the web decently. At this point of course there is zero evidence of that. Yes, Tim has told us this will occur, and I suppose the majority of webmaster believe him and find this exciting news. But even though the free add url is new, the continuing zero evidence of free pages being added is not a good thing, and of particular concern to people who will be dropped on April 15th unless they get a free crawl. So...
How long do you expect it to take to spider sites who use the free add url? [The text on the add url page obviously is there, but "could" is not the point. What is your expectation? What is your target?]
How long do you expect before sites that are poorly crawled now, say 10% of their pages now in the index, will have 99% of their pages in the index?
No. The Yahoo! Express directory submission program is still available. This program allows you to be considered for inclusion in the Yahoo! Directory and provides no assurance of search inclusion within the index or ranking within search results.
You can find more info at:
[ecom.yahoo.com...]
What about sites/pages that got "editorial" penalties from Inktomi? Apparently those penalties are carrying over to the new Site Match. How do we get them reconsidered/removed? In my case, my penalty was applied over a year ago. Many changes were made to that particular site, but Inktomi has not responded to any of my questions/concerns. I will not consider Site Match for any of my high-traffic sites until this is addressed. I imagine many others here at Webmasterworld are in the same boat judging from the posts over the past couple of years.
C
Welcome to WebmasterWorld....
Everyone, including myself really want to know - and Tim has "eluded" himself that free submit sites will get crawled and indexed....
The question is:
- what exactly is Y doing to make this happen?
- when does Y expect any of this to begin showing free crwaled sites?
I belive the real problem in all this lies here....Follow....
If sites get into the SERP and begin to witness traffic - before 4/15
And.... that traffic converts to sales and begins to replenish bank accounts that have been depleted since Y dropped G and as such traffic deminished....
Then, many - many sites could afford to entertain other alternatives such as Overture, PFI, PPC
So.... The bottom line I belive here is that a lot of sites have lost revenue since Y dropped G....
There is truly no money to budget....
Why wouldn't Y simply first provide good traffic and then phase this in slwoly....?
Thanks
ARC
I am still wondering for how long this directory will exist and whether being included in the directory still has an influence on placement in the 'new' search engine. However, this forum is about Site Match not the directory.
It looks to me like you are trying to get things sorted out, between you, Tim and Yahoo_Team. Thank you. As I said before, a little bit of noticeable communication goes a long way.
I am still wondering, with people in this forum having invested ($1000's) in InkTomi's paid inclusion believing that this would include being in the new Yahoo search engine, what advice can you give them. Your brief grace period is very little compensation for that amount of money.
Is it just considered a 'mistake' on their behalf or are you willing to work something out with those in that situation on a case by case basis?
Or is this what the stated feedback email address was for?
>This program allows you to be considered for inclusion in the Yahoo! Directory and provides no assurance of search inclusion within the index or ranking within search results.
Question: If the directory screens sites, why can a site be good enough to be in the directory, but not the index? Surely Yahoo built a directory that is crawlable by their own bot.
>Larger customers also have dedicated account managers that can help them drive the most qualified leads possible.
Question: What kind of help? I have a few new projects and it would be nice to know what this value-added help actually is.
That is paranoia beyond all reasonable expectations.
Yahoo is doing what Google did in 2002. If you weren't around at that time then a simple summary is "They are doing the right thing".
There is largely nothing to fear from Yahoo. Some sites have been banned.....for good reasons.....but beyond that it is a free for all.
Yahoo today is Google 2002, which I personally thought was the best Google ever....I know y'all don't agree with that!
Build a good content site, get links to it.....Yahoo will love you......simple, straightforward, no tricks, no financial retribution, or hidden agendas at play.
You were the one that banned the sites?
You seen them all I suppose
Why dont you complete your sentence.
You say "some sites have been banned for good reasons"...
some sites are banned for bad reasons.
Yahoo is not google and never will be google. They are a conglomeration of search engine technology companies managed by an incredible portal.
Google is focused on search results.
Yahoo has a mess on its hands. They have different factions inside the company fighting for different things. Between Ink, Overture, Altavista, Fast... (Im sure ive left out some) oh and Yahoo management, they are in a mess, yet they realized they couldnt spend 2 billion dollars on search engine technology and depend on Google for search results.
Compare this with Google, whose sole mission has been to be the best search engine on the web.
I have a few sites banned by Yahoo, heck I have a few sites banned by Google......if you don't, you're not really trying in my book....LMAO;)
This is a game....We try to manipulate the results....and once in a while they catch us at it. Good for them when they catch us....and shame on us when it happens....but it is all a game.....albeit a very expensive, or glorious one!
I expect to throw at least one hundred domain names per year away.....it has never happened yet, but I budget for it.
You can play the virgin bride until the cows come home if you wish.....but don't expect us all to take on that role :)
I ware my "Black Hat" with pride....and money in the bank!
