[Sigia-l] "Best Bets" the Yahoo way

[Christina Wodtke]

Yahoo has always had people to pay to be included in the directory, but it
has never been the only way to be included. Inktomi has always offered folks
to pay to be indexed, but is not the only way to be indexed. Both of them
are just ways to guarantee you get included in a timely manner.

there are two core concepts in web search: pay for placement and pay for
inclusion.

pay for placement are those adsense and the overture ads you seen on the top
and right of your "real" results. On a given query then can be more useful
than the results, on others they are merely in the way.

pay for inclusion means you pony up for the crawler to be pointed you way.
this is extremely useful for a brand new website that has no there way to be
found, since it is too new to be linked to yet. Yahoo does not let paid
inclusion affect the algorithm, though there has been conversations that it
might actually improve relevancy, since a paying company *might* be a more
authoritative source. Liek all elements of their algorithm, Yahoo relies on
strict blind testing to determine relevancy.

This is a war folks, between major search players, and until someone wins
decisively it is way to dangerous from a business point of view to do
something as foolish and game-ending as offer irrelevant  results. And even
them, it may never be a viable practice.

It is *entirely* possible that the same folks who pay for placement are also
the folks who can afford to hire a firm that knows the other basic tenants
of SEO. But that does not mean causation.

""Any time you accept money to influence the results, even if it is just for
inclusion, it is probably a bad thing," Mr. Page said." Yes, it is a bad
thing when you rival has found a way to get a larger fresher index that you
have publicly shunned.

This is all public information you can get with a quick search on your
engine of choice (wow, choice! imagine that-- you may love Google, but they
were getting to be quite the monopoly, albeit a so-far benevolent one) and
not Yahoo insider data. Go find out for yourself.

BTW, this is a disingenuous title-- a best bet is when someone has done a
query analysis and has crafted the first few results to be the "best" ones.
You could stretch it to include for PFP, but not PFI. You could make a case
that the "Inside Yahoo!" sections are best bets.
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=define+disingenuous&sp=1&ei=UTF-8&n=20&fl=0&fr=slv2-
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=94306+chinese+food&ei=UTF-8&fr=slv2-&n=20&fl=0&x=wrt
http://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=slv2-&ei=UTF-8&p=701+first+ave+sunnyvale+ca
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=david+bowie&ei=UTF-8&fr=slv2-&n=20&fl=0&x=wrt

Okay, now I'm donning my flameproof suit.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Listera" <listera at rcn.com>
To: "SIGIA-L" <sigia-l at asis.org>
Sent: Monday, March 01, 2004 11:22 PM
Subject: [Sigia-l] "Best Bets" the Yahoo way


> "What our users care about is the relevancy of results, not whether the
> source paid to participate," said Tim Cadogan, a vice president in Yahoo's
> search unit.
>
> Yahoo to Charge for Guaranteeing a Spot on Its Index
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/02/business/02net.html>
>
> Is this the new 'standard' in search?
>
> ----
> Ziya
>
> Architecture is politics.
>
>
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