60 replies to this topic

[Jill]

My feeling is that there's no reason to pay-per-inclusion these days as the search engine spiders are doing a fine job of including stuff anyway.

Agree? Disagree?

Barry Lloyd, the moderator here is out of town, but I expect he'll chime in when he's back. (Hopefully he doesn't mind that I made him a moderator! )

Jill

[Matt B]

Unfortunately, I did find a reason. But it's not one that I would ever recommend.

This company bought some "canned" ecommerce software that created query strings about a mile long, rendering the site almost invisible. PPI on Inktomi was the fastest and most economical way to get something indexed until a better solution could be found.

On the other hand - I have found it useful for extremely competitive product pages, where I can check my optimization for specific phrases every couple of days. For certain sites, I'll use it for particular pages, just to get an added boost and guaranteed indexing. When I calculate the ROI - it is always in the client's favor.

[Jill]

For certain sites, I'll use it for particular pages, just to get an added boost and guaranteed indexing.

You're not supposed to get an added boost. Do you feel that you do? Because if so, there's something fishy going on with Inktomi. Not that it would surprise me!

Jill

[Haystack]

I'll only use it for new sites who are itching to get fairly immediate indexing. However, once indexed the cost doesn't seem to be justified.

[Matt B]

You're not supposed to get an added boost.  Do you feel that you do?  Because if so, there's something fishy going on with Inktomi.  Not that it would surprise me!

Well, maybe the added boost is from the guaranteed indexing, and not so much from the "here's your reward for paying us." When you can see the results of optimization within a few days, and work within the site to target additional, related phrases, it can be effective, especially with the additional reporting features.

I like it with pages that are highly targeted, even if they are already indexed. Maybe it's in my own mind, but I feel it can be a good strategy. I don't recommend it for most of my clients, the ones it does make sense for, I only present it if there is a good ROI analysis for doing so.

[Jill]

You do get good clickthrough stats with PositionTech, so that might be a good enough reason for some to pay for inclusion.

Jill

[Matt B]

You also get some good reporting from Marketleap, but I use them simply on the basis of meeting Noel at the SES conf.

[markymark]

It's always good to use PFI - I can't be sitting around waiting for pages to be picked up for free when I can simply pay some money and have them in MSN, AskJeeves, etc within a few days. I don't know how any SEO can justify not using it. Clients want results and a return on their investment as soon as possible and this is just one way of achieving it. Plus you can tweak the pages, as Matt says for higher ranking.

I find Paid Inclusion indispensible. Frankly, I wish Google would follow suit.

[Jill]

I think if/when you're dealing with a brand new site, then PFI can definitely come in handy. I've used it before under those circumstances. But most of my client's these days have well-established sites that are frequently getting crawled. It seems that it doesn't take very long at all to start seeing the new stuff in all of the search engines. Often Google is the fastest for these sites, but it doesn't take that long for the others to follow suit also.

Of course, these are sites that have been around for some time and already have some decent links pointing to them.

Jill

[Searchaware]

Jill

For new sites, I think PFI is essential. As mentioned above clients usually want some sort of visibility quickly. Guaranteed re-indexing is useful too to enable those all important tweaks to the pages.

Has anybody noticed any particular disadvantages? For example, is Inktomi less likely to crawl the site if you are already paying for a single URL to be indexed?

Nice looking forum by the way

Simon

[Jill]

Welcome, Searchaware! Glad you like the forum.

So, how about when your site comes up for renewal after one year. I haven't been renewing my client's sites, but am wondering what others think.

Jill

[Matt B]

I'll start out using the PPI if the site is having indexing issues with Inktomi, but during the course of the year, my goal is to make the site indexible and get those pages into the index naturally.

[Mel]

Not sure if Slurp is less likely to crawl a site if you use (or have used) PFI but it seems to me that they are less likely to index your other site pages.

Case in point:
Site has total of 58 pages 57 are indexed in Alltheweb, 54 are indexed in Google, and 3 are indexed in Inktomi, plus a fictional page that uses the Looksmart title and description. All the pages are either modified or saved with a new date at least once a month.

Slurp has visited the site 49 times this month and taken 1.58 MB, visited 79 times in June and took 1.2 mb, visited 49 times in May and took 845 Kbytes, visited 62 times in April and took 1.3 MB.....

This site had Inktomi pfi on two of its pages for a year, whichwas discontinued six months ago, but there are only 3 pages in the Ink index.

Strangely enough the site is doing very well in the MSN and Hotbot serps?

I leave you to draw your own conclusions.

[MakeMeTop]

Well, I can hardly let this opening comment by Jill go by without some sort of comment

When people think of paid inclusion, they automatically seem to think of the type of PFI originally begun by Inktomi nearly 3 years ago. However, I deem that any payment (apart from bidded pay-per-click - as from Overture) to a search engine is PFI. Even Yahoo's Express Submit is (IMHO) a form of PFI - if you don't pay them you may not get listed. Remember, that in all instances of PFI you are only guaranteed to be listed if your URLs adhere to the appropriate guidelines laid down by the engines. So that they could be removed or denied entry in to the applicable database if they breach guidelines. Little difference there then between an AJ/Inktomi page PFI and Yahoo URL acceptance editorial policy!

Several here have stated that PFI is almost a given for new sites - and that is certainly my position. As a person who makes their living out of providing relevant traffic to clients quickly - failure to use the appropriate PFI method for a site can reduce both my and my client's income!

However, some methods may or may not be useful - depending on the situation and the demographics of the users to be targetted.

If the site is already crawlable, you have done a reasonable job of optimisation and you have plenty of time - building appropriate links which can produce both qualified traffic and "reputation" may be all the PFI that is needed. Gimpsy, JoeAnt, Yahoo and Business.com all sound to be areas where I may pay to be included.

On a site with thousands of URLs which are database driven, I may decide to use a Trusted Feed - as well as do the above. Obviously, in this instance paying for individual pages to be put into PFI would be extremely costly. But Trusted Feed allows them to get qualified traffic (if built correctly) while working on possible other methods to getting the high traffic/revenue pages indexed by more usual means.

I don't think I have worked on a single site in the last 3 years where some sort of PFI has not been used.

And I would give a small wager that most people use some sort of PFI most of the time - but they never really thought of it as that

[Searchaware]

Jill

After the initial year it is usually a different matter. Certainly any PFI to FAST shouldn't need renewal as you will have been well spidered but Inktomi is a tricky one IMHO.

Mel is quite right when he says it seems you have less chance of getting your site fully spidered and multiple pages listed - in my experience you will get a handful of pages if you are lucky following a PFI. Also your site is quickly removed after expiry. The problem is I still find it takes quite a while for Inktomi to spider your site otherwise.

As MakeMeTop also mentions, PFI is a given for most newish sites - clients want answers and rankings/traffic ever more quickly these days and it seems to me they are rarely prepared to wait for a crawl of their site. Well my clients do anyway...

Simon