Yahoo To Charge For Search Listings 263
ibi writes "Yahoo will start taking payments to "tilt the playing field" for companies that want their listings given more prominence by Yahoo's search engine. In an NY Times article, one search consulting firm [bias warning] claims that the extra material that paid listings get to submit will muck up the search results. Yahoo combined the announcement of the paid listings with an unrelated announcement of a new partnership with a few non-profits. ("Don't look over there - what about this nice shiny thing here.")"
I don't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yahoo has been charging for-profit ventures for a few years to be added to their directory. So, really, this is just the addition of a new feature in their "pay us to stand out" set. It's clearly further tarnishing Yahoo's reputation as a searcher... but Yahoo has never been anybody's primary search engine for years. Even Yahoo conceeded early on that some searches they just couldn't answer, which is why they've always had a partner like AltaVista, Inktomi, or Google to field failed queries.
Even Google conceeds that the way for a searcher to make money is to serve up targeted ads. The old GoTo.com who turned into Overture knew that in the late-90s too. But, the key is, Google has very solid lines between the content and the ads. However, some other search sites that use Google results and Google ads have allowed the line to become blured. Now, Yahoo's more or less offering a presentation format where the line will be absolutely invisible...
Be interesting to see if this works or backfires...
Re:I don't get it. (Score:5, Interesting)
Google puts a lot of emphasis into making sure its ads are *good* results. More important than just indexing the advertised pages and doing the usual IR analysis on the content of the page, it also takes into account the click-through rate of the given ad. An ad with a higher click-through rate is probably more relevant since more users are clicking on it. Displaying ads which have historically high click-through rates benefits everyone involved - Google benefits by being more likely to get the money for the click-through, the user benefits by seeing more relevant ads, and the advertisers benefit by having their ad shown in relevant situations where people actually want to see it (hmm, I guess this last point is a bit weaker, but the benefit to the advertisers is not really important - they wouldn't be advertising if they saw no benefit).
One final point is that it's tempting to think this type of "user-moderation" system would work well for normal search results as well (and I suspect there's room to grow in this area), the reason it works especially well for ads is that there's less incentive for the advertiser to try to cheat the system - if they clicked their own links a lot, they might raise their ad's rank but also have to pay for all of those useless clicks.
Re:I don't get it. (Score:5, Interesting)
ONLY place on the net where I click on ad links.
I am not alone...
Re:I don't get it. (Score:4, Insightful)
ONLY place on the net where I click on ad links.
I am not alone...
Same here. I don't click on ads that annoy me by getting in my way, because I just expect the site I reach to do the same. But Google ads avoid this, and it often feels more like there might be useful related content on the other side (and sometimes there is).
Re:I don't get it. (Score:3, Insightful)
What are you talking about?!?
I've been using google for about 4 + change years now, and I can remember a time when it used to blow away the competition on link accuracy. Unfortunately that time is no more. People have become experts in the art of google page rank spamming, and anymore, any time you look for *anything* on google, you get more on people selling it to you than how to do it. There are so many link farm pages out the
Re:I don't get it. (Score:5, Interesting)
Google provides great search results. They get money from ads, but maybe not as much as they might get from making the advertising line an invisible one.
Yahoo sees this, and they know they can make fantastic revenue by selling better reaching ads to customers.
The problem is what happens in the long term. Yahoo is trying to make a quick buck for the shareholders. But evil corporations, much like spammers really, will advertise so hard, they don't care what you're looking for in a search engine, so long as their site is first on your search results and their spam is at the top of your inbox, that's great for them.
But in the long term, the searchers aren't dumb. Google doesn't serve up walmart.com for every single search entry you enter, it gives them what they want - good results. Yahoo will be surfing up herbalviagra.com after every search result. Which engine will you use?
Re:I don't get it. (Score:2, Insightful)
Yup. That's why the rest of the world just uses Google. Last time I used Yahoo (long ago) it was a frustrating experience, which didn't inspire me to persevere.
Didn't Yahoo learn the first time? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Didn't Yahoo learn the first time? (Score:2)
I'll be interested to if it topples google due to being better, or due to google chasing after the IPO money a little too hard...
Re:Didn't Yahoo learn the first time? (Score:3, Interesting)
While I agree with everything you said, I disagree with this:
For people just interesting in searching with Yahoo! (for whatever odd-ass reason they have...), can use http://search.yahoo.com/ [yahoo.com]
The fact of the matter is, most people just don't use Yahoo! for searching, they use it for whatever other banal crap they use Yahoo! for, the search feature just makes it so they don't have to move their mouse ALL THE WAY up to the
Re:Didn't Yahoo learn the first time? (Score:2)
google.com
search.yahoo.com
6 characters longer. Makes a minor difference. Google did not win by simple site layout alone, but this was a part of Google winning.
Think of it this way: how is Joe Schmoe going to know to use search.yahoo.com? Even if he did, would he remember it? Probably not. Just some food for thought I guess.
Re:Didn't Yahoo learn the first time? (Score:5, Interesting)
That was back [archive.org] when they cared about user experience and their stock was at an all time high [yahoo.com].
PS: Note that the Y2000 problem was real!!! Within one week of Jan 1 Y2000 both Yahoo and Microsoft were at their all-time high [yahoo.com]; and have never recovered since.
AskJeeves Denounces Paid Inclusion. (Score:5, Informative)
" AskJeeves will stop accepting advertiser payments for inclusion in its searchable Web database, a move to draw competitive lines between it and Yahoo's new search engine."
Re:AskJeeves Denounces Paid Inclusion. (Score:4, Funny)
On the other hand, has anyone ever gotten a straight answer out of Jeeves? I didn't think so.
Re:Didn't Yahoo learn the first time? (Score:5, Interesting)
Good to know the linux search was still there "back in the day".
God, I feel old now
ODP (Score:5, Informative)
This sounds wrong, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps a fee of $5-$10/year and you become a 'Registered Site'. This may eliminate a lot of the junk link sites that seem to be operating on the same methods as spam.
Wrong or right, this may actually improve the perceived accuracy to many users. If not, people will just continue to migrate to Google.
Re:This sounds wrong, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:This sounds wrong, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
How about adding a fee of say .25 per Keyword? A normal site could have 10-40 Keywords costing them an additional $2.50-$10/Year. These sites that just seem to have a keyword for every damn thing you might think to search on would not be able to cover the costs.
Re:This sounds wrong, but... (Score:3, Informative)
You obviously aren't that familiar with the PPC (Pay Per Click) industry. Google and overture(yahoo) both charge a minimum of
Re:This sounds wrong, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
We need a middle ground between completely free and expensive sponsored links.
There would still be sponsored links, that would pay big bucks per click, etc.
So unless google/overture lower their rates low enough to make it unprofitable for the search engine spammers
Google wouldn't lower Any rates, they would add a new middle, registered rate. The purpose of this rate being to remove spam. If this registered rate charges by keyword, the spammers could not possibly keep up. They
Re:This sounds wrong, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
I like Google's method (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it's the best paid system I've seen. Pay to increase rank systems piss me off because they often lead to misleading results.
Sorry to break it to anyone (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Sorry to break it to anyone (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sorry to break it to anyone (Score:2)
Search Engine Spam (Score:5, Insightful)
At least it's more upfront and honest than spamming the search engines which seems to be the other option and is wholly destructive to the utility and relevance of a particular search engine.
Re:Search Engine Spam (Score:3, Insightful)
Methinks they are a good thing, so long as they do not influence the rankings in the main list.
As long as Google can survive and keep their integrity, I'm in no hurry to look for anything better.
Other things being more or less equal, I'll buy from an advertiser in Google.
more upfront and honest
In the long haul, that's always better to deal with.
You get all the worms and viruses becaus
Contradiction? (Score:5, Insightful)
So...unless I'm not getting this, they're making it sound as though advertisers pay for...nothing. Which clearly isn't correct
Re:Contradiction? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Contradiction? (Score:5, Interesting)
Interestingly enough, one of the main uses I could see for this would be for news organizations to pay to get their new news spidered on a regular basis (hourly?). The intriguing part of that is that those people would be competing with Yahoo (which offers news access as one of its services).
Of course, you can also get problems long term, as they switch from a net wide scan every three months to six months to a year... All to make their frequent spider program look better.
Re:Contradiction? (Score:3, Interesting)
Hmm... I can see it now.
On-Demand Spidering.
Abstract: A method and a system where a search engine or a search service spiders a content of a website on demand, within a specified time period, by the user of the service or the website. The user may be (or may not be) required to compensate the search engine provider for this service.
Claim 1
Re:Contradiction? (Score:2)
Again, this is not a service for somebody who runs a small site, it's for the huge sites to attract traffic to their deeper pages.
Re:Contradiction? (Score:4, Informative)
Surprise! (Score:4, Insightful)
Google did an excellent job with their advertising model, now if only someone attempt to copy that part instead of the search technology maybe we will be alright.
Depends on how they present them... (Score:2, Insightful)
Well gee (Score:4, Insightful)
Please excuse me if I now take the view that the playing field in the upcoming search engine war has dropped to two players, Google and MS. Yahoo meanwhile, it appears, is going to simply continue to do its own little "portal" thing off in the corner and stay out of it.
alltheweb.com (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:alltheweb.com (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, aside from getting stuck in the link farms.
model (Score:2, Insightful)
Bad move (Score:2, Insightful)
This is actually good (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, there's always silver lining [techweb.com]. Yahoo is currently adding a bunch of sources (including audio NPR feeds available via text search) that weren't available via general search engine before.
Before that they've added support for RSS feeds to both Yahoo Search and My Yahoo.
The paid directory program does not seem to be that big of a deal right now compared to where Yahoo's catalog was three or four years ago, when you had to be there to conduct any decent business. When was the last time you used Yahoo's catalog? It's good to see the top guys among search engines [itfacts.biz] fight for that top spot, search engine business needs competition.
Lack of innovation in search sector (Score:5, Insightful)
Where's the semantic analysis? Where's the intelligence in the software? How come we can block 99.997% of email spam - but not 5% of google spam.
And now the news is that yahoo is accepting payments for placement - which is entirely understandable, there's no better technology for ensuring that the top search results at least won't be to link-farms. They'll just be to the highest bidder.
Roll on the new search tech!
SharedID - Single Sign On for webapplications [sharedid.com].
Credibility (Score:5, Interesting)
Better yet (Score:2)
Never release bad news on a slow news day... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a classic case of releasing the bad news when as few people as possible looking.
Text of Article (Score:5, Informative)
By SAUL HANSELL
Published: March 2, 2004
ahoo said yesterday that it would start charging companies that want to ensure that their Web sites are included in its Web index from which research results are selected.
The practice, called "paid inclusion," has long been a part of many search engines including Microsoft's MSN search function and Ask Jeeves. But Google, which last year surged ahead of Yahoo to become the No. 1 site for searching on the Internet, disdains the practice as misleading.
Last month, Yahoo replaced Google, which had operated Yahoo's search engine, with its own technology to index billions of Web pages. Yahoo says it hopes to include every site on the Internet it can find in that index at no charge. But sites that pay for Yahoo's new program can guarantee that they are included in the index.
Advertisement
Yahoo will update its index of paying clients every two days, while it may update its listing of other sites once a month. And Yahoo will give paying clients detailed reports on when its users click on their sites and will help those sites improve their listings.
The paying sites will be intermingled with others in Yahoo's main search results listings, which are separate from the advertising called "sponsor results" on top of and to the side of Yahoo's search results.
Yahoo said that although sites would be able to pay to be in the index, its computer system would still pick the most relevant site for each search, without regard to payment status.
"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. He pointed out that many companies hire firms that specialize in tweaking Web pages so that they rise in search rankings.
Yet executives at several of those firms say that paying to be included in search indexes often does help paying sites jump ahead of nonpaying sites: paying sites are allowed to submit additional information, in a so-called data feed, which helps the search engine associate their pages with a given topic.
"Almost without fail, any time we submit a feed, stuff that was nowhere to be found on a search engine pops up to the top," said Gord Hotchkiss, president of Enquiro, a search consulting firm.
Sites will pay from $10 to $49 for each Web page indexed and from 15 cents to $1 each time a Yahoo user clicks on a link to their sites.
Safa Rashtchy, an analyst with Piper Jaffray, estimates that this paid-inclusion program will produce $100 million a year in revenue for Yahoo.
Mr. Cadogan said that the purpose of the program was simply to offer Yahoo users more relevant information. He added that Yahoo would give some nonprofit organizations like the Library of Congress the ability to add pages to its index without paying. (While Yahoo's paid inclusion program is available to any business that can enter a credit card number on its Web site, the nonprofit version will be open only to a select group of organizations.)
Yahoo says its program is in compliance with Federal Trade Commission guidelines on paid inclusion programs because the payments are disclosed to any user who clicks on the "what's this" link that appears on each search.
Larry Page, a co-founder of Google, argued that such disclosures were not enough. He compared search results with the news articles in newspapers or magazines, which are independent of advertising.
"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.
Re:Text of Article (Score:3, Interesting)
Some services (Inktomi again, I think) allow you to pay for "deep searching". The spider will crawl deeper into your site and index more pages.
There are two ways to view this. On one hand, being indexed provides a benefit to the publisher. But doing the indexing takes $ and resources. This practice says that they'll index more, but for a price.
This is why Yahoo cannot beat Google (Score:5, Insightful)
Google decides what to do, tries to do it very well and if possible, tries to make money of it. Their primary purpose seems to be to do a good job. Take google news for example - it is an excellent service and I don't see how they make money off that.
Yahoo on the other hand, would gladly sacrifice excellence in their service, for money. Nothing wrong with making money (I am behind capitalism 100%), but companies that make money by doing their job well will succeed in the long run.
The sooner Yahoo learns this, the better it is for them.
Re:This is why Yahoo cannot beat Google (Score:2)
If you think that Google doesn't have similar deals with some of it's partners (like OSDN and AOL), you're sadly mistaken.
Re:This is why Yahoo cannot beat Google (Score:2)
Re:This is why Yahoo cannot beat Google (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not that Yahoo is greedy and Google isn't, or even that Yahoo is greedier than Google. It's that Google is long term greedy whereas Yahoo is short term greedy. (Note that I'm using greedy in the non-pejorative sense here.)
Google wisely recognizes that it's sometimes better to build a quality product over time and then cash in than it is to trade quality, reputation, and higher future profits for a quick buck. Short term greed is a common affliction of public companies, like Yahoo, who have shareholders and analysts breathing down their necks every quarter for immediate results. Privately held Google has the luxury of taking their time
Cheers,
IT
Paid listings are what ruined altavista (Score:5, Insightful)
Many other search engines - most of which you're not likely to have ever heard of - have always taken paid listings.
Users quickly find that search engines that use paid placement do not return relevant search results.
Yahoo might make a few quick bucks at first, but once users figure out that it's not giving them the most relevant results, they'll go find a different search engine that works better.
I think the way Google does it, with the adwords select self-service ads, is probably the best way a search engine can make money. One reason it works so well is that the user can distinguish easily between paid and unpaid placement.
Re:Paid listings are what ruined altavista (Score:5, Interesting)
So many of these online advertisers suffer from stupidity in that they think if they can just trick a user into seeing their page, the person will spend lots of money. Of course the actual result is users get real quick on the back and/or close key and get angry at people who do that.
The opposite is also true to some extent. I've had a number of searches in the past where I didn't want information about an item, I want to buy one. However all I'd get is informational pages. I'd have to piddle with the search syntax to turn up some stores.
With the Google system, you know that those links are bought and paid for. You know they want to sell you something because of it. So if you want to buy, you go over there. It obviously works since plenty of people continue to pay to have their ads there.
building the better search engine (Score:5, Insightful)
Google/NYTimes reg. bypass (Score:4, Informative)
Pay for the internet (Score:3, Interesting)
Google doesn't need to trick people into clicking on Amazon, neither should Yahoo.
I personally am searching around for a good BBS in the area, and getting back to the roots.
GOOD , Maybe Ill start using it in stead of Google (Score:2)
M$ will win this one (Score:4, Funny)
Result: Microsoft
Yahoo search: viagra
Result: Microsoft
Yahoo search: apple
Result: Microsoft
Yahoo search: linux
Result: Microsoft
Yahoo search: porn
Result: Microsoft
Yahoo search: penguin
Result: Microsoft
What a Shame (Score:4, Interesting)
bullshit on this! (Score:5, Funny)
When I enter HP Laserjet IIIsi I get 400,000 freaking sites peddling toner and ink refills but I have to dig through dozens of pages of bullshit to find tech info like parts lists or diagrams.
I wish they would implement a new switch or two in search engines,
HP Laserjet IIIsi -commercial -for profit +usefull
Re:bullshit on this! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:bullshit on this! (Score:3, Informative)
Fundamental Flaw In This Business Model? (Score:3, Insightful)
I can see where portals are struggling to make the bills, but this seems like shooting yourself in the foot to keep your toothache from hurting.
I for one am not impressed with the continued commercialization of the Internet. I hope this fad comes and goes quickly. *fingers crossed.*
Wow! Paid results! Good-bye Google! (Score:5, Interesting)
Pffffbbbbbbbt.
The reason Google kicked ass in 1999 (when I found it; so call me a late comer, it's ok) is that it
1) Was simple
2) Was clean
3) Wasn't a portal
4) Gave honest results
The reason it continues to kick ass is that it
1) Left the 1999 values in place
2) Clearly demarks paid results from algorithmic
3) Provides honest results (including countermanding manipulation attempts)
Reagrding a being portal: if Google added email I'd be interested. If it added a "my" page, I'd sign up. Google has impressed me to no end unlike almost any other popular web site (I'd have to add Groklaw to my list of trusted sites; and LWN).
If Yahoo wants to replace Google in my life it needs to undo years of bad moves. "Launch," anyone? Funny thing is, I use Yahoo as my email host (and I pay for it); I even have the same my.yahoo.com page I first made in 1999. It's still my browser's home page. But I spend far more time using Google than using Yahoo, even though I'm commited to so many services Yahoo provides. The first time I was tempted to change home pages was when Google News came out. I did change, for a while. But my email is with Yahoo. All it would take to make me a Google Goon would be for Google to offer email services.
So, the news that Yahoo will skew results for the highest bidder doesn't concern me -- I haven't used Yahoo search in
My!Yahoo may be my start page, but my browser, Firefox, has Google built-in "every" page I visit (and I doubt that's because Google paid the Open Source project to do it).
Bye Yahoo. Thanks for employing Jeremy Zawodny and letting him talk/write about MySQL. Thanks for having a fairly decent email service (not thanks for not opening up an alernate port to port 25 which is blocked by many ISPs). Thanks, but I don't know how long I'll be around. Couple months, maybe just due to inertia.
I forgot the most important thing (Score:3, Insightful)
When I want to download a new version of the ssh client I use on Windows machines, I goto Google and type "putty" in the search field. Then I hit enter.
Every time I am brought through the "deep web of billions of pages" to the most relevant site for Internet users looking for something called "putty." No, it's not SillyPutty (that's second.) It's not Home Depot. It is www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~ [greenend.org.uk]
Yes, it will make for inferior search results... (Score:2, Insightful)
Ultimately, as long as people find something halfway decent, your everyday Joe will not notice and they will go on their happy way using Yahoo, a well-known name in his mind, for search.
All the while making Yahoo filthy rich.
Won't make a difference (Score:5, Insightful)
When Yahoo and Google learn how to properly catalog php pages without requiring mod_rewrite fudging by website owners, perhaps then it'd be worth investing in some ads. After all, if website owners can get it to work, why can't they?
Also - when Yahoo can effectively filter out the link-redirect scams going on, it might be more enticing for potential advertisers. Paying for the "opportunity" to be listed amongst top-ranking link scammers isn't worth much, IMHO.
As for websurfers, I'd suggest Vivisimo [vivisimo.com]. There's nothing better than clustered results!
The Seperation of Church and State in Media (Score:5, Insightful)
The key thing is, these two operations within the media outlet have opposing goals. The content side has to tell it like it is, while the sponsors want to use the outlet to get out their message. They're at odds with each other, they always have been and always will be.
The key thing is, the content people try to maintain that their image is more important than the income of the sales staff. That is to say, sometimes they want to publish information that the sponsors would rather not see published. A good media outlet has to do such a thing sometimes, it's about maintaining credibility.
Of course, the sponsors would want such stories spiked. And, they'd also like to blur the line between what is content and what is a paid ad as much as possible.
History has shown, that sometimes cash-crunched media outlets will agree to let their credibility be compromised in order to make some quick bucks from a sponsor. In nearly every case, such quick bucks come, but eventually the credibility loss gets to the point that there's no audience left, therefore nothing to sell to the sponsors, and the media operation is out of business.
So... it'll be interesting to see how well Yahoo is able to keep the paid inclusion system from corrupting its content of results.
Of course, Google has already made arrangements to crawl news sites more frequently than others, and even get into registration-requiring sites that would otherwise be inaccessable to GoogleBot. Froogle is Google's attempt to do the same for shopping sites. The key thing is, however, that Google is asking for no money to be included in Froogle, just maybe a little help in geting their bot past the doors.
Yahoo may see some short term money from this effort, but they'd better watch just what they're selling, otherwise they may end up killing what little of a golden goose they have left over there.
Yahoo misses the point, again... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yahoo isn't even really out of the gate and they already miss the point that brings people to the search engine to begin with.
Probably the best news Google had today.
Web based searching? (Score:2, Funny)
Slashdot, that pillar of journalism. (Score:4, Informative)
New Buzzword! (Score:3, Funny)
Guarantees? (Score:2)
What about "REFERRER" headers? (Score:5, Insightful)
So does this mean that Yahoo is going to munge the URL that is returned from a search so that webmasters can't make sense of the REFERRER headers from their logfiles? Or do they just think that webmasters simply don't realize that this information is available?
I think the free market will sort this out... (Score:4, Insightful)
In other news, the sky is blue... (Score:4, Interesting)
Yahoo is dead. They have a decent mail service which everyone uses to hide their identity while they troll for mistresses online, but other than that, the site is useless.
I wasn't charged (Score:5, Interesting)
I assumed Google had finally indexed the sites. Nope. It was Yahoo. My sites were listed high on the first page for several likely search strings. That would be good if I was actually selling a product.
I don't mind the way Google sells Google AdWords, as long as they continue to index just about any page and have very broad coverage. The advertising rates are very modest compared to other types of ads, the ads are very well targeted, with brief, tactful and informative text. No trees are killed, and the ads are clearly seperated from the non-advertised search results. They seem to be everything that weasel spammers claim to be but aren't. I like the Google advertising approach, both as a potential advertiser, and as a Joe Sixpack web surfer who sometimes looks for weird non-commercial stuff, and sometimes wants to find a place where I can buy a product. In fact, I'd very much like some way to tell a search engine that I want to buy something or I don't, and get relevant search results.
Yahoo would do well to exactly copy the Google approach to search engine advertising.
My Rights Online??? (Score:5, Interesting)
Last I checked, Yahoo was a Corporation and as such has the right to conduct it's business how it damn well chooses.
Whether or not they charge for advertising placement does not effect my online rights nor any other rights. If you don't like Yahooo's approach, it's your right not to use Yahoo.
So can someone tell me how this effects any of my rights as defined by the US Constitution or Court of Law, or is this just another example of a
First! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Paid placement? (Score:5, Informative)
-Kilka
Re:Paid placement? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm guessing it's the same with Yahoo, except $$$ is part of the algorithm too.
Re:Paid placement? (Score:5, Interesting)
And that is when people start looking towards better search engines that give them more relevant results. Yahoo is setting itself up to fail IMO if it is true that they want to tangle paid results with actually results. I mean how are they going to compete with google whilst doing that? Their objective right now is to supplant google and I don't see how they can do that with this scheme.
Re:Paid placement? (Score:3, Informative)
"Yahoo will update its index of paying clients every two days, while it may update its listing of other sites once a month"
which is just a more regular spidering;
"Yahoo will give paying clients detailed reports on when its users click on their sites "
which they would probably have to do anyway as part of the billing structure (which includes a click-through element); and
"(Yahoo) will
Re:Paid placement? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Paid placement? (Score:3, Interesting)
Secondly, Google doesn't penalise sites solely for employing seo companies. The first paragraph of Google's page on seos [google.com] makes that clear. Indeed, it would be impossible for them to do so.
I suppose that what would really matter here is the exact nature of of the services which Yahoo was providing. T
Re:Gold ship ... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Paid placement? (Score:4, Interesting)
I really don't mind them doing that. Using AltaVista, paid results are listed with a little divider between the rest of the results. That allows me to easily skip over the paid results without giving them undue notice. It's a good system that keeps my favorite search engine alive without annoying me.
Re:Paid placement? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Paid placement? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Paid placement? (Score:4, Informative)
Congratulations, you have failed to read the article. Yahoo isn't taking money for higher placements either. Their ads are separate, at the top of the page, and clearly marked.
What Yahoo is taking money for is spidering a site more often. That's it. End of story.
Re:Paid placement? (Score:3, Informative)
Not end of story. If you'd bothered to read to the end of the sentence in the article you would have noticed the following:
So, Yahoo is going to help paying
Re:Paid placement? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Paid placement? (Score:3, Insightful)
Where the hell is that written?
Re:Paid placement? (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, that's all SO wrong and unheard of. One begins to wonder if certain voices ever occupied this earth prior to the internet. Sheesh. The entire economy is based on the principle of bakhsheesh and France is
Re:Paid placement? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the issue comes down to whether there is some implication of "popularity" or "relevance" based on the position in the list returned. If you want analogies, would it be okay if an exam board awarded grades, but gave a preferential marking style (I realise that Yahoo aren't directly adjusting positions, though more frequent spidering would indirectly give improved results) to people who paid them money?
And yes, I wouldn't argue that fundamental rights are at stake here, but you could say that of a l
Even better question.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I know that when I do google searches for commercial product, the results in the advertiser links are 90% better (better = useful sites are in the advertiser links as opposed to the regular results 90% of the time) than results in the regular search.
Why?
Because in the commercial space, people willing to pay some money for a listing are also people who are generally much more able to provide the product I'm looking for. It's a lot harder for people who want to "fake" having a relevant site (and direct you to porn) to PAY for listings than to create misleading networks of links.
I think the real solution here is to let the user select whether they're searching for something in the commercial space or not. Give control to the user.
Re:"Search Engine Spam" (Score:2)
I would bet a lot that Google is training a Bayesian algorithm on "canon-print.free-stuff.make-a-deal.biz" and friends right now. If they aren't, they
Re:What could it hurt? (Score:5, Insightful)
I walked up to a person, and asked him to find data associated with "education", I expect I'd get a wide range of crap too.
If I asked him to find me data associated with "funding higher education" or "adult education in cabaras county" or "corruption in kansas public education systems", I might get something usable. Shockingly enough, Google does a pretty good job if given this data.
The search engine cannot read your mind -- you *have* to give it enough data to work with. If I can't expect a person to give me useful data for a search, I can't reasonably expect a search engine to do so.