[Sigia-l] Findability

[Simon Wistow]

On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 04:06:43PM -0500, Listera said:
> Are we clearly entering a period where (at even the most-trafficked sites)
> search results whether for crème brulee, medical info or a job opening are
> massaged not for relevancy/context but for "fundability"?

It depends on what you mean. Yahoo! has had paid matches for quite a
while.

If you look at something like this 

http://uk.search.yahoo.com/search/ukie?p=holidays&y=y

Then you'll note that there are sponsored matches. These are from our
partner Espotting and you can pay them (actually it's an auction) to get
a match against certain words.

Another way is to pay to have our surfers to categorise your site
quickly - this is called Yahoo! Express

http://add.yahoo.com/fast/add

And obviously you can pay for banner adds.

What it's never done, afaik, is increased the ranking of your site based
on money. Even paying for Yahoo! Express doesn't guarantee being given a
high relevancy or even being put in the directory. I think that paid for
ranking is highly dangerous and not just immoral. But that's just me.

Given that a totally free web is no longer a real possiblity I find
sponsored matches to be the least offensive option (I also don't really
mind interstitials since at least they're quick and go away) since
they're discrete, well marked and usually actually quite relevant. It's
also in no way as intrusive as large banner ads, popups, popunders or
those things that float over the page.

Simon