16 replies to this topic

[karisewell]

Hi All,

We've been using Positiontech to submit our customers sites to index's like Inktomi and now Yahoo. From Jill's latest news letter (issue 098) it seems that if you're already listed in the Yahoo index, there's no need to pay for the inclusion. But what happens if you are currently paying for inclusion, and the money in credit runs out? Does Yahoo remove you from the index and make you wait to be spidered, or do you just loose the impact of being re-checked every 48 hours?

Thanks for any replies!

Kari

[Jill]

Welcome Kari!

From what I understand, you simply go back to where you were before you paid (which should be the same as you are now, in theory).

Someone at the last conference told me they did this, and they didn't lose any positions at all. Your mileage may vary.

Good luck!

Jill

[Jbrookins]

I've ALWAYS hated Overture and Yahoo when it comes to certain business practices...ie disclosure of unpleasant details in this case. (Overture's customer service phone numbers aren't available once signed in..you have to search through their sales area for it)

As I understand it, your listings revert to whatever they were prior to becoming a site match customer. In essence, they remove any updates from the database and put back in old cached version or remove you from the index completely if you weren't in yahoo prior to becoming a site match customer.

Obviously, this MAY BE a short-term problem as you'll be reindexed normally within a few weeks, but it creates that dependancy on the program where you can't drop out without taking a hit.

I was looking for information on their site but no dice, not one peep about cancellation on their site. To make it worse, all the searches for it were bringing me right back to THIS FORUM. (well, ok, only bad as I'm trying to leave here to find it)

Of course, I could be remembering incorrectly, but I haven't liked Site Match from the get-go and that was one of the primary reasons.

[awall19]

for most sites: site match = bad match

[OldWelshGuy]

Hi Kari, welcome

this is a new slogan we created during a conversation about it the other day in another topic: -

By george, I think you just came up with SiteMatch's new tagline!

Overture SiteMatch
Frighteningly expensive with no real gain!


Says it all really lol

[wozza]

what about paying for Yahoo directory listings?

[karisewell]

what about paying for Yahoo directory listings?

I don't think the benefits of being in the Yahoo directory are worth the price any more. I'd be surprised if anybody uses the Yahoo directory if they're searching for something. I guess it would probably help you get in the search index though. It might be a cheaper option than SiteMatch for sites expecting huge numbers of visitors.

[OldWelshGuy]

It 'might' be worth it in the case of uk (£199 for life) but thee are other alternatives. Yahoo! have said that they are spidering the directory, but then again this could work against you, as if found in the directory, Yahoo! might well display your directory page title rather than your own page title.

Personally I don't bother.

[nedguy]

I'm not sure where I am with Yahoo.

My current site is a spin-off from an old site which we decided to take in a different direction. (That project has since come unstuck).

When I set it up just over a year ago I got in touch with Yahoo (can't remember how) and told them that my existing listing in the directory was going to become redundant, but that I had a new site.

I got a nice email back from an editor who simply replaced my old entry in the directory with the new one. He even asked what I would like for the description!

So I have a non paid-for directory entry that got there through 'grandfather rights'.

But when it comes to the search engine, I'm really not sure what's going on. For some pages - generally longer established pages - I come out on top with my primary keywords, for others I'm not in the running. Where pages are found, they seem to have been cached months ago. What really mystifies me is that I have not seen Slurp in my stats for this site ever. So what is spidering it?

I really want to trigger a serious spidering of my pages, but I don't want to spend a couple of hundred pounds to do it when I already have a directory entry.

Any thoughts?

[Jill]

As long as you have the one directory listing, the site will be spidered. You don't need "serious" spidering, just any spidering at all.

Jill

[nedguy]

Thanks Jill,

but how will I know? Are yahoo still using slurp?

NG

[OldWelshGuy]

This is where it gets fun Ned. I have sites getting spidered by alll the Yahoo spiders, ink slurp yslurp daft etc. I do however have one site that I recently introduced to the spiders, and it has only been spidered by Inktomi Slurp, NOT Yahoo! slurp. It is however in the yahoo! SEERP's and ink slurp is the only Yahoo! group spider to have hit it.

Obviously Google & MSn have been as well, but just the one from Yahoo.


So I can say with confidence that at least two get you in Yahoo! Search index
Yahoo! Slurp, & Inktomi Slurp.

here are the stats
Spider Hits
1 MSN Robot 853
2 Googlebot 622
3 Alexa Robot 63
4 Inktomi Slurp 37

These are the only 4 robots I have entroduced so far, but as you can see, no Yahoo! Slurp, but plenty of appearances and traffic, and 400+ pages in the Yahoo! Index

OWG

[nedguy]

Isn't that strange? How old are the cached pages they have for you on Yahoo then?

I get daily visits from YahooFeedSeeker but I've just quickly checked back to 1st Jan and no visits at all from either slurp.

NG

[andrew21]

It 'might' be worth it in the case of uk (£199 for life) but thee are other alternatives. Yahoo! have said that they are spidering the directory, but then again this could work against you, as if found in the directory, Yahoo! might well display your directory page title rather than your own page title.

Personally I don't bother.

You mention that the UK cost is £199 for life? Does that get you included on .com as well as .co.uk, because I just signed up for that annually recurring $299 one on the US site?

[BrianR]

Welcome to the forum, andrew21 - hope you find it useful.

Yes, the UK £199 fee gets you into both the .co.uk and the .com directories. However, I think you might need an UK-based IP address to qualify, but I'm open to correction on that.

BrianR