Question on Yahoo's Paid Inclusion Plan

Wall Street Journal article today

[alika]

"Yahoo says the payments merely guarantee inclusion, without boosting the order in which results show up. That leaves some potential advertisers wondering just what they are paying for, particularly if their site already is included in Yahoo's search results."

While the article raised nothing new about the questions we all have on the new program, the fact that this type of article makes it in big media is not what Yahoo is hoping for with its new program.

[Ozdachs]

>> this type of article makes it in big media is not what Yahoo is hoping for with its new program

Maybe. But, Yahoo is also fighting the perception that you can pay for top rankings in their SERPS. They want searchers to be reassured that the results are meaningful on their own and not purchased.

Webmasters/site owners may not be pleased initially. On the other hand, if Yahoo SERPs gain credibility and Google continues its random SERPs, then more searchers will switch to Yahoo. Then webmasters/site owners will see the value of PFI and tune their pages for Yahoo’s rules so they rank highly in the results.

[IITian]

Inclusion programs like Site Match are designed to boost your ranking. Yahoo knows that most searches are event-driven i.e. if there is a "wardrobe malfunction," search for that will dominate for next few days, probably peaking in 2-4 days.

Consider two sites - A and B. A pays for guaranteed crawling within 48 hours, and B does not pay. A wardrobe malfunction occurs, site A puts the keyword "wardrobe malfunction" on its page several times plus the entire story. It is crawled within 6 hours.

On the other hand site B does exactly same but the Yahoo crawler, obviously in no hurry, comes to his site 3 months later.

Which site will appear higher on serps when searchers search for "wardrobe malfunction" 2 days from the incident?

Moreover frequest crawling allows these paying sites to game the algo by altering various factors and see their effects within a day or so, therefore, fine tuning their pages.

Finally, Site match lisitng will be marked as Sponsored Listings, as they should be.

[alika]

Moreover frequest crawling allows these paying sites to game the algo by altering various factors and see their effects within a day or so, therefore, fine tuning their pages.

The article actually gave one site as an example who was previously in the 3rd page of the SERPs for their keyword. Upon joining and paying in the Site Match program, their site leaped to the 1st page, citing the changes they made to their site as a result of the feedback they got from the review.

[ptietze]

IITian,

I was not aware the PFI listing would be marked as "Sponsored". Where did you see this?

[IITian]

>I was not aware the PFI listing would be marked as "Sponsored". Where did you see this?

I was just guessing on what the FTC will force Yahoo to do as logical arguments and empirical evidence start piling up supporting that site match indeed does help in serps positions. ;)

[worker]

PFI proved to be a bad approach for search engine results in the past. If it is true that rapid repeated crawling of submitted sites allows webmasters to manipulate search results by modifying their sites and noting results, then Yahoo is headed down a path that will eventually display weak results, especially on competitive search terms. Eventually, they will need to move to a complete free crawl of the net to compete with Google, or they will be left with manipulated results on a subset of the net.

[helenp]

<<<<worker: or they will be left with manipulated results on a subset of the net.>>>>>>>

= spam