264 replies to this topic

[Alan Perkins]

Yes, it may cost more (if you get lots of clicks) but then again it may not (if you only get a few clicks). Either way it's up to you to determine whether the ROI is there. I would advise not paying if you don't feel comfortable. Your site may be crawled and indexed for free. It was always this way with paid inclusion.

BTW don't think I'm a fan of the old OR new programs. It's just that I don't see there's that much difference between them. Some Webmasters will gain, others will lose, and searchers should notice little difference.

[MakeMeTop]

turning to Barry's method in the weeks and months to come.

Yes, I knew there would be a downside to this

The up-front costs of following my model were pretty high and have now been slashed! The risk factor has been significantly reduced. Even I have made some bad judgements in certain market areas and not broken even on some campaigns but this will be almost impossible to do (I hope) in the future - unless you are really bad at SEO/SEM!

I still think that a little time should be spent stepping back from the whole PFI issue. If Yahoo are to be believed, then most sites won't need any form of PFI (except, perhaps, a Yahoo directory listing). Let's see what happens when they start their regular crawls and at what frequency.

[Grumpus]

Yep. The major advantage of PFI in Y! that I can see (if everything else is on the level) is for sites that have time senstive/constantly changing info. If your site is relatively static in nature, you just need some good links and it'll get in there.

G.

[SearchRank]

That's the route I am going to take and already do so anyway unless we are talking about a large e-commerce site with an extensive product database. Then trusted feeds are the way to go to ensure content gets indexed. But for regular sites, my practice will be the same - see if it gets crawled and updated for free and then how it fares both in positioning and traffic before jumping on the PFI/PPC bandwagon.

[AussieWebmaster]

That is heavy, two sets of charges

It will be interesting to see how this pans out.

One thing though, if the paid inclusion with a per click cost is indistinguishable from organic, Isn't this against some US ruling with regard deceptive advertising or some such?

Unfortunately not...
so no big bucks from a dot.com screw-up

[AussieWebmaster]

Yes, I knew there would be a downside to this

The up-front costs of following my model were pretty high and have now been slashed! The risk factor has been significantly reduced. Even I have made some bad judgements in certain market areas and not broken even on some campaigns but this will be almost impossible to do (I hope) in the future - unless you are really bad at SEO/SEM!

I still think that a little time should be spent stepping back from the whole PFI issue. If Yahoo are to be believed, then most sites won't need any form of PFI (except, perhaps, a Yahoo directory listing). Let's see what happens when they start their regular crawls and at what frequency.

It just becomes an added spend... eventually the organic listings will end up on their own again lower down... Yahoo becomes know as the truely commercial search engine... why not just let the people who are selling something... that way the tire kickers may still be there... but the dreamers are over at Google...

[Jill]

A few things I learned tonight...

In Danny's evening session, he discussed this program a lot. Apparently, he was told that there's sort of an "editorial review box" that will get "checked" for pages that get accepted into this new paid-inclusion program.

This checkmark, will then be added to the relevancy algorithm, which obviously will give a boost to sites in the program. Apparently, the Yahoo reps told Danny that other sites not in the program may also get this special checkmark, through editors that just go out and find good sites. But seriously, does anyone believe they'll be looking very hard to add the checkmark to free sites?

So, be prepared for the PFI/PPC pages to definitely outrank the free sites. This is how they will get away with not removing the free stuff.

The other thing I learned was in talking to major paid-inclusion company (one of the ones that you go through to submit to Yahoo/Ink, etc.). I don't want to say who it was because I don't know if the info was just among friends or it was actually meant for public consumption. Anyway, he said that their PPI orders were off by at least 75% since the announcement. He said this was actually good, because they were expecting them to be off by 90%. (My numbers may be off, but I believe that's what I heard him say while we were in the bar just now drinking!)

I found that very interesting and telling.

The whole major spin on the press releases made a lot more sense when I realized that Yahoo and their partners obviously knew that this would be perceived very negatively. I really thought that they just thought we were all dumb and would simply buy into their spin. I was happy to see that they didn't think we were dumb, and knew we wouldn't go for it...at least not right away.

The other thing this person said was that even if they only gain a small percentage of their customers back, they'll still make more money than they were before.

So it's easy to see why Yahoo decided to go for it under those circumstances.

And Andrew, I know what you mean about the Future of Search panel tomorrow! I was actually more stumped before all this as to what I might say. Now, I think things are a whole lot more clear as to where that future is. Unfortunately, it's not all that bright, imo.

Jill

[AussieWebmaster]

I just read the pages over at Overture and I have to agree with you Jill... it seems like the opportunity of getting those free ones looked at have to be slim if they are not also doing a huge increase in employees... guess will have to monitor the want ads... the ODP has problems and it is done by volunteers... are we to think that the company's current employees have that much free time that this new venture is going to taken on in their extra time at work?
If there is not a thousand editors hired in the near future then the next step will be the magic wand approach to editorial checking... the directory people will have triple loads to check...

[AussieWebmaster]

I am going to write the best titles and descriptions this weekend and submit all the pages of our new revamped site that rolled out yesterday! And I AM GOING TO OWN my industry!!! LOL...

[Jill]

Let us know how that goes, Aussie!

Jill

[Searchaware]

I have quite a few pages with good rankings in the new Yahoo search already - and these are not from the Inktomi PFI.

They are in a pretty competitive sector so it will be interesting to see how quickly they fall once this system is up and running. I expect the fall will be pretty quick...

I will keep you posted.

[Alan Perkins]

In Danny's evening session, he discussed this program a lot. Apparently, he was told that there's sort of an "editorial review box" that will get "checked" for pages that get accepted into this new paid-inclusion program.

This checkmark, will then be added to the relevancy algorithm, which obviously will give a boost to sites in the program. Apparently, the Yahoo reps told Danny that other sites not in the program may also get this special checkmark, through editors that just go out and find good sites.

Again, AFAIK it's always been that way, at least with some PFI engines.

[Black_Knight]

In Danny's evening session, he discussed this program a lot. Apparently, he was told that there's sort of an "editorial review box" that will get "checked" for pages that get accepted into this new paid-inclusion program.

This checkmark, will then be added to the relevancy algorithm, which obviously will give a boost to sites in the program. Apparently, the Yahoo reps told Danny that other sites not in the program may also get this special checkmark, through editors that just go out and find good sites. But seriously, does anyone believe they'll be looking very hard to add the checkmark to free sites?

It sounds rather like the checkmark can be added to sites reviewed by the directory editors too. That could be important.

The key to how this new Overture SiteMatch program affects the SERPs at Yahoo is going to depend on how well Yahoo! Slurp crawls and indexes. If the Yahoo version of the spider carries on being as voracious as Slurp has been previously, then these new PFI programs will make little difference to the end user, and will mainly be a recourse for sites that don't have much linkage, and/or don't want to wait for between 2 weeks and 6 months to get their site fully indexed.

[GeordieSEO]

One question which I can't see the answer to is: Can you turn listings on and off ? I can see clients wanting to do this otherwise how do you control your spending?

One interesting thing I noticed at PositionTech under the pricing.

(Pricing tiers are based on the number of URLs per domain/host.)

Currently as a SEO I have one account and all the URL's are added to that account so the cost goes down. If the billing is done per domain or host then that will increase the cost.

I suspect that the per domain/host may be done by IP address, which again will affect the costings dependent on how one's clients sites are hosted.

I can see a lot of small businesses wanting nothing to do with this as the costs can quickly build up. I was discussing the changes with a colleague and we estimated that one client could be spending £1000 month just on click charges.

It is also not going to be attractive to products where the profit margin is low, which again will hit websites which rely on the pile high-sell cheap strategy.

[Randy]

A couple of random thoughts re: Yahoo! and The FTC from a non-lawyer... (apologies for the length)

First, you have to realize that the FTC Recommendation from 2002 was just that, a recommendaton. Not an Opinion or new Guideline; and certainly not a Rule. Where the Gov't is concerned, semantics are very important. There are Recommedations, Opinions, Guidelines and finally Rules.

My take on the semantic difference is that a Recommendation is a sort of warning, or a shot across the bow, that basically tells a company or an industry that if they don't do something about a perceived problem themselves (Self-Regulation) then the FTC will almost certainly be inclined to step in and begin the process of making a Rule.

The Real World difference? Someone who feels they've been wronged cannot sue and win judgement in Civil Court based upon transgression of an FTC Recommendation. They can sue and can win civil damages if it's a Rule, because rules carry the weight of Law.

I fully expect the FTC will be revisiting this issue. They'll be forced to, I highly suspect, because you can count on folks like Commercial Alert will most assuredly be scrutinizing this change.

If you read the FTC documents from 2002 located Here (FTC Response to Gary Ruskin, Executive Director of Commerical Alert) and Here (FTC Recommendaton Letter sent to some search engines) you will see that the FTC makes a clear distinction between PPC and PFI programs.

The distinction being that one has an effect on ranking placement (PPC) and the other (PFI) does not. As such, different remedies were recommended, with PPC having stricter suggestions, with good reason.

This new Yahoo! business model, which basically combines the two as I understand it, totally confuses the issue. So it will have to be revisted to determine if this new model falls into the PPC or PFI recommendations.

Second, if and when the issue does get revisited a simple $ or other character to denote paid listings will not be satisfactory to provide Clear and Conspicuous Disclosure as required by FTC Act Section 5, 15 U.S.C. Nothing of the kind is going to suffice if PPC are included with and mingled with non-paid listings.

To quote directly from the FTC document entitled Dot Com Disclosures:

The Clear and Conspicuous Requirement

Disclosures that are required to prevent deception—or to provide consumers material information about a transaction—must be presented "clearly and conspicuously." Whether a disclosure meets this standard is measured by its performance—that is, how consumers actually perceive and understand the disclosure within the context of the entire ad. The key is the overall net impression of the ad—that is, whether the claims consumers take from the ad are truthful and substantiated.

In reviewing their online ads, advertisers should adopt the perspective of a reasonable consumer. They also should assume that consumers don’t read an entire Web site, just as they don’t read every word on a printed page. In addition, it is important for advertisers to draw attention to the disclosure. Making the disclosure available somewhere in the ad so that consumers who are looking for the information might find it doesn’t meet the clear and conspicuous standard.

Farther down in that same document it also states that "Asteriks or other symbols" may not be effective in passing the Clear and Conspicuous Requirement.

Seems pretty clear to me! What Y!'s lawyers think doesn't matter. How the average surfer views the mixing and mingling does. What is clear and conspicuous to this decidedly non-average surfer? Text that says simply "Paid Advertisement" and links off to a more complete explanation of the new PFI/PPC combination model.

My bottom line assessment? This isn't even started yet, let alone finished. Yahoo! will never get this by the FTC if I'm understanding their new business model at all. And it is very likely that some Rules, as opposed to Recommendations, are going to end up being put into place as regards Search Engines and all types of paid placement.

While it is rarely a good thing in my mind for any governmental body to get involved, in this case I believe it is well needed. If for no other reason than to set the boundaries in Law so that the search engines know what is what, and so that consumers or anyone else who feel they have been wronged can avail themselves of a civil remedy if they feel so inclined.