264 replies to this topic

[Grumpus]

The pricing tiers are for the inititial consideration fee, not the per-click fees. Per click fees are determined by the category your page belongs in.

According to OV's FAQ, when your account runs out of money, you'll vanish from the SERPs until such a time as you put some more money into it. So, you can, say, put $100 in there and you'll keep getting shown until that $100 reaches $0.

G.

[bwelford]

I'd love to be in the Googleplex at the moment. I thought Google had been shooting themselves in both feet recently on the only parameter that counts in the long run - that is Relevancy as seen by the mass of every-day searchers.

I thought that Yahoo would capitalize on this weakness and deliver a severely damaging blow to Google. However instead of showing how their relevancy can be streets ahead of Google (with their stable of search horses), Yahoo comes out with its complex system for trying to make more money. It's so complex and so difficult to explain that it's not surprising that there is mass confusion among the industry watchers. The stock market seems to be reflecting this major dropping of the ball.

Yahoo should have been announcing something where everyone said, "Wow, that's mind-blowing. Let's all jump aboard."

My image of the two giants at the moment is of two heavy-weight boxers staggering around and trying to pull themselves together and figure out how to floor the other guy. This isn't how it's meant to be!

[Alan Perkins]

Interesting and thoughtful analysis, Randy, and pretty much in agreement with my thinking since before the FTC even published their recommendations.

However, I cannot stress this enough, it seems. There is NOTHING NEW in this program. It all existed before. It has simply been repackaged.

Companies with XML feeds have been paying on a per-click basis for listings that are mixed into the "organic" search results for years now. And even normal PFI could be priced on a per click basis. If you pay $50 for one year's inclusion you expect some clicks (otherwise you would not pay it). If over the course of that year you receive 50 clicks, you have paid a dollar a click. This is simply a different way of making Webmasters pay for the same thing. But the same commercial influences exist in the search results as have existed for some time.

Commercial influences concern whether a URL is

1) crawled/reviewed
2) indexed
3) positioned/placed/featured more favourably

The method of payment for the above (fixed fee, pay-per-click, whatever) really makes little difference.

[Grumpus]

Not only is the program confusing, but the statement by them of "Why I Need It" is confusing. And, the confusion is only compounded by the whole "free deep crawl for government/non-profit places" program. I'm very glad that I don't have any SEO clients that I need to explain this to this week.

G.

[Jill]

You can budget your account.

They claim that if your page was in for free before you paid for it to be listed, if you stop paying, your position shouldn't change.

That one is a bit hard to wrap your head around.

If your page was not previously in for free, you pay and get in, then you stop paying, your page will then disappear.

I believe this is how I heard Danny explain it last night. I'm sure I'll hear more about it today!

Jill

[Grumpus]

Ugh. I suspected that, but it looks so ugly written out. So, I don't want to wait to get my site listed by getting good inbound links. So, I pay to get in there. I leave it there for a year while I build up link-pop and do everything I need to get it so the page is desirable by the search engines. Then, I cancel my account. Now I've got a wait however long to get it in there for free, and there's no guarantee that it'll ever get picked up because of the fact that it "wasn't in there, and I paid, then stopped paying, so it's not in there now" factor.

Sounds rather like trying to quit a drug habit.

G.

[Jill]

G, I don't think that's really different than it is now with Paid-inclusion.

I think the only difference (and this may not be different either) is that extra "reviewed" checkmark thingee. But perhaps all PI pages were getting that already?

I think that is a good one for me to ask someone here at the conference today. Will let you know what I find out.

According to Alan, it's nothing new. But I got the impression the way Danny was describing it last night (from what he was told by Yahoo execs) that this was indeed some new aspect. Maybe I misunderstood, however.

[Alan Perkins]

According to Alan, it's nothing new.  But I got the impression the way Danny was describing it last night (from what he was told by Yahoo execs) that this was indeed some new aspect.  Maybe I misunderstood, however.

I spoke to an Inktomi tech about it at SES in London last year and it was in place then. I think it's been there all along. The precise way it's being interpreted could be new, of course, but what you described was my exact understanding, Jill:

...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

[MakeMeTop]

From August last year, all PFI pages have had this human review. A lot of pages/sites have been getting zapped as they renewed their annual subscriptions as they got reviewed too!

I have one client that renewed $25K worth of pages, lost all those AND all his other sites (cross-linked) that were indexed for free! He was spitting blood - his pages had been in for years!

So, yes, the check box for accuracy has been there since just after last SES London.

[bwelford]

BTW the correct name for the Search Engine Company we are all talking about is Yahoo!. That's their registered US trademark. They also have Y! as a trademark.

Yahoo is the US trademark of another company that sells knives, firearms and sporting goods.

I think it's most important to keep putting that ! at the end of the name.

[Alan Perkins]

From August last year, all PFI pages have had this human review.

I think Index Connect (trusted feed) has had it longer. This new program is just a blend of Index Connect and Search Submit, applied to multiple engines. That's why I'm saying it's nothing new.

[goodman]

bwelford,

Thank you for posting on High Rankings Forum.

We regret to inform you that your post has violated Google's TOS. Google does not permit advertising of knives of any kind. This policy is unfortunately not written down anywhere, so don't ask us for a list. As a result of your intransigence we may be forced to mispronounce Jill's name at future roundtable sessions and to begin every sentence with "So..." just to annoy you. Please be good from now on, or who knows what might happen.

Protecting you from evil,

The Google AdWords Support Team

[goodman]

But back to the topic at hand,

From a marketing (and market) standpoint, the PFI pricing (per click) poses a serious problem. Essentially, a flat fee makes little sense.

This is exactly the ill-considered road LookSmart started down, and in the trenches we could immediately see that the model rewarded a few lucky advertisers, but made no sense at a system level.

First, LookSmart began with 15 cents. Then they arbitrarily decided on categories that would be "worth" up to 75 cents. In essence it gets back to the inefficiencies of fixed ad pricing which tanked the whole online ad industry in the first place.

I will say in all fairness there is some good in this from an advertiser's standpoint: it could be convenient for many to use, etc.

However Yahoo seems to have allowed internal groupthink to dictate the design of this program. Although it may make sense from the logic of their own internal personnel deployment and their revenue projections, Site Match is going to bump up against at least four real-world forces:

(1) Users;
(2) Marketers who feel they're paying too much and marketers who worry that bigger companies will get "two checkmarks" that would boost them higher than smaller ones;
(3) Market forces (flat pricing means Yahoo is either gouging or leaving money on the table -- the market will not tolerate such massive inefficiency and either flee from nonperforming clicks or will flock to underpriced ones, and in the latter case that can distort search results)
(4) The government, the media, Nader

Although never a big fan of paid inclusion, I see where it can fix some of the problems faced in properly indexing the web. However this pricing model has inherent problems, and unfortunately it's unfixable. An auction model is impossible because they need to be saying "pay for inclusion" and denying that it's in any way "pay for placement."

Something's broken here. Luckily for Yahoo they also own an ad model that works: Overture.

[Randy]

I don't disagree at all Alan that this same sort of "system" if you will has been in place for some time. Especially as regards XML feeds.

Repackaging it and making it affect everything, rather that the (pardon me XML Feed gurus) relatively insignificant percentage of XML Feeds is going to kick the entire scheme to the top of the pile at the FTC me thinks.

As an analogy, it would be like me running a totally false and deceiving ad in a small town newspaper, with a circulation of 3,000 per week or so. I'd likely get away with it. But if I put that same ad in the USA Today (registered trademark of Gannett Co. ) with its 6.5 million daily readers, the chances of me getting sued for false and decptive advertising increases dramatically.

Same method, same general medium. Different scale. Different result.

The FTC should have gone after the XML-PPC-sprinkled-in-with-organic-listings long ago. They didn't. It was too small-fry for them. But once this new model goes into effect, all it takes is one complaint, referencing the previously published FTC position, and the investigation begins anew.

I'm betting that's already in progress. At this point the watchdog groups are simply collecting information and/or waiting for it to begin so that they can prove the deed has been done.

[Alan Perkins]

Randy, do any search on Yahoo at present and you'll find:

TOP 20 WEB RESULTS out of about n million  (What's this?)

Question: Is the information on the What's this? page sufficient?