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For those unfamiliar with Yahoo's Shopping's PFI program, it is quite similar to Site Match. Yahoo Shopping, once an exclusive shopping portal for Yahoo hosted stores, is now open to all. Sites are added for "free" by Yahoo's shopping crawler and ranked with a relevancy algorithm (think Froogle). To augment the crawler, Yahoo introduced a PFI program. As with Site Match, paying only guarantees being crawled often, and should not effect ranking.
As a "favor" to existing Yahoo stores, Yahoo automatically enrolled us for a month of "free" PFI listings (sounds familiar?). We were also promised by a different "Yahoo Tim" in another forum that Yahoo stores will also be crawled for free, just as other stores. After all, Yahoo's goal is to provide the best possible shopping portal for their customers.
The day the free month was up, every previously listed Ystore was gone (at least all the stores who participate in the forum). I have even requested to be crawled by using their well-hidden form to no avail. Of course, this only happened to Yahoo's paying customers (i.e., customers that Yahoo is already collecting payment). How is removing high quality 5-Star Yahoo Stores while leaving inaccurately crawled listings good for users? Yahoo can’t have their cake and eat it too. I believe we were removed in order to strong-arm us (their paying customers) into joining their PFI program. It is going on a month now, and still no listings.
My Inktomi PFI listings have now been hijacked by Yahoo's Site Match on the premise that Yahoo is doing me a favor by giving me "free" traffic for a month. Judging by my recent experience, I fully expect my paid listings to be dropped, while simultaneously receiving an email pointing this fact out, together with instructions on how to sign up for Site Match. The dropped sites may eventually get re-crawled as promised, but not until they strong-arm as many customers as they can into signing up for fear of not being listed. The loss of business alone while waiting to be re-crawled may force many to sign up. Of course, non-Inktomi customers won't be removed or subjected to this practice.
I hope to be proved wrong, but current actions speak louder than words. The test will be to see if the Inktomi listings are removed the day we lose our "free" traffic.
daveg
I wasn't surprised by what happened, but I was rather disappointed. I am a little worried that the Yahoo Search group will go down a similar road. It's ben well documented that they have pure intentions and a desire to be fair, but when the someone's division has the opportunity to make some serious $ and someone in a decision making position has the possibility of appearing like a genius and getting a promotion by making rain, what will happen? Patience is going to be the key. Patience combined with your free speech. There are dignified and adult ways of expresing your opinions to Yahoo. They will listen if you will express them in a fair manner. We are all keeping our fingers crossed that the Yahoo SHopping guys don't have any meetings with the Yahoo Search guys. :)
Everyone here is right on the money!
We too have a Yahoo store....
We originally chose the Yahoo store platform becuase of the Shopping inclusion. Our reasoning was.... We go with Y store and get included in shopping. We will have low conversion rates initially and Y only wants a piece when we make a sale.
Well, having made a sale - we can afford to give Y a piece.
Now.... We forked over an initial deposit.... it's depleting daily and for about two weeks, we have converted two - 2 - visitors!
Why? Well it has nothing to do with our ability to convert.... We convert a huge volume daily of Google and ASK.com visitors. We have a 5 star rank on Yahoo....and no conversions on Yahoo?
Yahoo needs more reputable merchants like us and you guys in this forum. My only guess as to why conversion is low is because the visitors aren't well qualified.... Meaning the searcher is not pre-convinced that Y Shopping is a viable outlet.
So the searcher just browses... clicks away.... does't buy and depletes the deposit.
Yahoo does not do a good job investing in the Y Shopping experience and wants to make money at it. Had they better promoted the Shopping portal then conversions would have been better.
However, Y wants these days a one sided equation - they want webmasters to spend and they do not want to spend money themselves.
We have been waiting for the FREE CRAWL - it hasn't happened and it WON'T happen.
What makes the "brain trust" over at Yahoo - especially Terry.... think that with first hitting store owners in the wallet we will invest in Yahoo?
We will spend our biggest bucks.... over 2K per month on Google....long before we commit to Yahoo....Why?....
Well the free traffic plus ad spending equals a conversion rate we can live with.
Also... as a side bar - if a searcer sees an organic listing coupled with an ad on that search engine, conversions tend to be higher.
If we aren't showing up in the SERP - we don't advertise because the one sided equation does't work.
This is the BEGINNING OF THE END....
What a shame! -- What a Shame!
Is this a trick question?
Also.... an added observation....
Has anyone noticed that all the free legacy listings that were in Yahoo several years ago maintain top positions.... and PFI listings and Paid Directory listings cannot topple those free URL's?
It's a magic act!
It goes like this.....
Keep you eye on the dollar bill.....
( they call this 3 Card Monty )....
It's played on every street corner and now appearing exclusively on Yahoo!
If a site is well connected (listed in all other engines) and PFI does not affect rankings, the only thing that should change after the free trail ends is the rate of crawling. If listings are removed for ANY period of time, Yahoo will again be showing a lack of integrity.
If Yahoo believes in the value of Site Match, strong-arm tactics and unfair practices shouldn’t be necessary.
And if PFI will not influence rankings, then any competitive SERP should not change. Because I would find it hard to believe that some obscure page never found by a crawler could outrank a high ranking site on a competitive SERP.
In another post (that has been locked), Yahoo_Mike says:
A question was asked whether the Yahoo! Express directory submission program was discontinuedNo. 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.
Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but isn't the whole SiteMatch part of their plan to gather more content? And if a site is in the directory and even hand edited by someone at Yahoo! wouldn't that mean it should be in the index as well?
If they really want the most content available why not include the directory? Google crawls DMOZ, why would Yahoo! not crawl their own directory, after all, they must think highly of it or they wouldn't charge $299 per year for the chance to be included?
Yahoo keeps saying that PFI will not affect the quality of their SERPS, but if webmasters can make changes to their sites and see how they affect positioning, then how can Yahoo prevent rampant manipulation of their SERPS?
If the only thing they can do is to threaten with removal, then they will end up dropping good sites that accidentally cross some line, and end up having a wave of the blackhat SEO's that build kamikaze "throw-away" sites designed for short-term Yahoo SERP manipulation.
What am I missing?
