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Yahoo To Charge For Search Listings 263

Posted by timothy from the full-disclosure-is-the-important-thing dept.
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.")"
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Yahoo To Charge For Search Listings More

Yahoo To Charge For Search Listings

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  • I don't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Trejkaz ( 615352 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @12:17AM (#8448767) Homepage
    Isn't searching supposed to be getting the things which match? Why don't Yahoo just index more pages, and index that content better? Or is it just that they feel inadequate compared to Google?

    • Re:I don't get it. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @12:36AM (#8448923)
      "Yahoo" in the proper meaning of the term, never indexed. The original Yahoo was a directory rather than a search engine.

      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)

        by asteinberg ( 521580 ) <ari DOT steinberg AT stanford DOT edu> on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @01:14AM (#8449139) Homepage
        Everyone's talking about how Google clearly separates its ads from its search results, and yes, that is nice, but I think Google has something else going for its advertising service that nobody seems to be noticing.

        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)

          by Compuser ( 14899 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @02:25AM (#8449475)
          The benefit to advertiser is clear: Google is the
          ONLY place on the net where I click on ad links.
          I am not alone...

          • Re:I don't get it. (Score:4, Insightful)

            by zCyl ( 14362 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @03:00AM (#8449615)
            The benefit to advertiser is clear: Google is the
            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)

          by zerocool^ ( 112121 )
          Google puts a lot of emphasis into making sure its ads are *good* results.

          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)

        by obeythefist ( 719316 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @02:05AM (#8449372) Journal
        It's the invisible line that causes all the problems, too!

        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)

      by BrokenHalo ( 565198 )
      Isn't searching supposed to be getting the things which match?

      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)

    by chrisopherpace ( 756918 ) <cpace@@@hnsg...net> on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @12:18AM (#8448774) Homepage
    Google by far beat Yahoo the first time, because Google has a simple interface, with very few misleading pages (except for the bombs, which are at most the first few sites). Yahoo, on the other hand, has always had inferior searches. This will only make Yahoo's searches worse, resulting in more people flocking to google. Just my 2 cents.

  • ODP (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @12:19AM (#8448779)
    It's not perfect, but the Open Directory Project [dmoz.org] is a better Web directory. It powers the Google Directory as well.

  • This sounds wrong, but... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by l810c ( 551591 ) * on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @12:19AM (#8448784)
    I'm not entirely against the idea of paying for placement if it's specified. We need a middle ground between completely free and expensive sponsored links. This might help filter Search Engine Spam, which is fast becoming a huge hassle and detriment to successful searching.

    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.

    • This will not work, the Junk placement guys a la Searchking will just hike their fees....
      • This will not work, the Junk placement guys a la Searchking will just hike their fees....

        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.

        • .25 per keyword per year. Yeah Right!!
          You obviously aren't that familiar with the PPC (Pay Per Click) industry. Google and overture(yahoo) both charge a minimum of .10 per keyword per click with some keywords costing upwards of $7 PER [overture.com] CLICK [overture.com]. Search engine placement is big money with many companies spending in the 5 and 6 figures PER MONTH for placement. So unless google/overture lower their rates low enough to make it unprofitable for the search engine spammers (and likewise unprofitable for themselves),
          • From my original post:

            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

    • That's silly. You're not offering any incentive to stop spamming keywords. What's to stop companies from both paying for a commercial listing and continuing to spam keywords to get listed in the other categories as well? Remember, companies think the more exposure the better. It's not more work, you just pay a search engine placement scammer a small fee.

    • I like Google's method (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @01:04AM (#8449090)
      You have a clear differentiation between paid links and Google's search. This does not mean, however, that people never go to the paid links. On the contrary, which section I look in depends on what my objective is. If it is information I want, I look at normal links. However, if I'm looking for places to buy, I look at the paid links. Google is very good at returning stores that are actually carrying the product I searched for.

      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.
  • ...but search engines went to hell about 8 years ago. Paid ranking didn't just arrive on the tarmac this afternoon at 2:38, runway 12, now did it...

  • Search Engine Spam (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lewko ( 195646 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @12:20AM (#8448787) Homepage
    As long as the paid placements are delineated as such (e.g. Google's paid listings) they may not be such a bad thing.

    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)

      by Tony-A ( 29931 )
      As long as the paid placements are delineated as such (e.g. Google's paid listings) they may not be such a bad thing.

      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)

    by NotAnotherReboot ( 262125 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @12:20AM (#8448789)
    For its commercial Web site owners, Yahoo unveiled a new "paid-inclusion" program called Site Match, which allows commercial Web sites to pay to be indexed and included in regular search results.
    and...
    The company says the paid listings will not rank higher in its results than they otherwise would.
    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)

      by univgeek ( 442857 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @12:22AM (#8448816)
      They pay for more frequent spidering of their webpages. This would certainly be a benefit to some commercial sites. Not sure that it is useful for a majority of sites.

      • Re:Contradiction? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by mdfst13 ( 664665 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @12:38AM (#8448940)
        I do a lot of work with shopping cart sites...many of them would pay to move up the spidering after making changes (e.g. US$20 to spider today rather than next month). If that's all that this is (paying to get your site spidered earlier and/or more often), then it's a good thing. Free sites will still get spidered and rankings won't get affected (except in the short term, i.e. when they would otherwise not be listed because the content hasn't been spidered yet), but sites will have the ability to speed up the spidering process if they have time dependent info (or just don't want to wait two months to get spidered after making changes).

        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)

          by zurab ( 188064 )

          I do a lot of work with shopping cart sites...many of them would pay to move up the spidering after making changes (e.g. US$20 to spider today rather than next month).

          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

      • In addition to more frequent spidering is a first spidering for a page that might have otherwise never entered the index. For sites like Amazon.com that have a deep, deep, deep, database of pages, it's an advantage for them to be able to push their changes in rather than wait for the spider to stumble upon what changed.

        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)

      by wronskyMan ( 676763 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @12:29AM (#8448874)
      From the SiteMatch trademark application:
      Providing electronic navigation services via the internet, namely, providing search engine services for obtaining data on a wide variety of topics; tracking and analyzing the performance of online advertising for others; providing information, creating indexes of information, indexes of web sites and indexes of other information sources in connection with the Internet; providing information from searchable indexes and databases of information, including text, electronic documents, databases, graphic and audio visual information, by means of the Internet; providing editorial review, marketing consultation, site performance analysis and reports regarding the performance of client web sites
      It is possible that the payment ensures that the commercial sites are regularly crawled every x days for example, which would be of assistance to online merchants who want their latest deals to appear on searches, instead of their page from a week ago. The trademark app also indicates the possibility of companies being able to get usability/statistics reports generated by the crawler for their sites.

  • Surprise! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Herkum01 ( 592704 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @12:20AM (#8448791)
    Should anyone be? That seems the only way people can come up with to make money off of search engines. I am not saying it is a good way, or the right way, but damned if it has not been done before so lets do it again! Its gotta work this time!

    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.
  • Google doesn't present the paid ratings as actual search results, do they? I believe they actually present them separately, clearly marking them as paid listings. If Yahoo wants to do this, I don't have a problem with it, as long as they don't pretend that these paid listings are there for the same reasons as a 'good hit' is. . .

  • Well gee (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @12:22AM (#8448810)
    That's the one certain way to convince the world that they're going to produce higher-quality search than Google, isn't it?

    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.

  • model (Score:2, Insightful)

    by mhlandrydotnet ( 677863 )
    So Yahoo! has decided that a search engine where pages get ranked by advertising dollars as opposed to a search engine ranked by what the user wants (relevance to the search term) is a good idea? Nothing like finding what the customer wants and giving it to him/her.

  • Bad move (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Hopelessness ( 742112 )
    This is definitly going to skew the results towards the biggest companies (Not as if they intened otherwise, just stating this). If they wanted a search engine that was at least useful compared to Google, this was not the way to go. I don't just want to see the highest bidders in the results.

  • This is actually good (Score:5, Interesting)

    by prostoalex ( 308614 ) * on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @12:24AM (#8448827) Homepage Journal

    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.

    Among the organizations working with Yahoo! are National Public Radio, Northwestern University, the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library and the National Science Digital Library.

    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)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @12:26AM (#8448848)
    Reading the article - I can't help but be amazed at how little the search sector has changed in 5 years. Google came out with pagerank in 1999 (publically - it was running at stanford for much longer) - and now we're in 2004 - and the technology that runs 3 of the worlds top engine (msn, google and yahoo) is still the same thing - link weighting and keyword matching.

    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)

    by Sparky77 ( 633674 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @12:26AM (#8448849) Homepage
    Paid-for search results lessen the credibility and trustworthiness of a search engine. I personally don't put any stock in results that I know might have been manipulated by the flow of cash. If I want to find information about laptops, I want this [google.com], not this [overture.com]. Notice that the google search returns links to relevant research sites, whereas overture just spams me with links to retailers. A good search engine helps you find information that's not easy to find on your own, and it's not exactly difficult to find someone who wants to sell you something.
    • Google ALSO gives you links to retailers, but you know what they are. It's also good at making them quite relivant. So if after you read the research sites you decide you want one, you have an easy place to find stores that will sell you one. However it is clear, up front, that the intent is sales, and that they paid to be there.

  • Never release bad news on a slow news day... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @12:28AM (#8448864)
    And of course, this all comes out on Super Tuesday, a day when newscasts will be filled with primary election results and therefore won't have time to mention a comparitively small-time business story. The 30-second mention this story might have gotten on mainstream stations drops to zero.

    This is a classic case of releasing the bad news when as few people as possible looking.

  • Text of Article (Score:5, Informative)

    by OverlordQ ( 264228 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @12:29AM (#8448875) Journal
    Yahoo to Charge for Guaranteeing a Spot on Its Index
    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)

      by barthrh2 ( 713909 )
      There is nothing wrong with paid inclusion. Inktomi has been doing it for ages. You used to be able to submit to Inktomi for free via Hotbot, but that got cut off.

      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)

    by teetam ( 584150 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @12:30AM (#8448880) Homepage
    There is a fundamental difference in the approaches of these two companies.

    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.

    • Congratulations on completely misunderstanding what is going on here. Paid inclusion will only improve Yahoo's ratings. All it means is that a site will get spidered more often than it otherwise would. It doesn't effect ranking.

      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:5, Insightful)

      by IntelliTubbie ( 29947 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @01:00AM (#8449071)
      Google decides what to do, tries to do it very well and if possible, tries to make money of it ...Yahoo on the other hand, would gladly sacrifice excellence in their service, for money.

      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 ... although I wonder if this will change after the IPO.

      Cheers,
      IT

  • Paid listings are what ruined altavista (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MichaelCrawford ( 610140 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @12:32AM (#8448892) Homepage Journal
    AltaVista used to be a great search engine before they started taking paid listings.

    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)

      by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @01:13AM (#8449131)
      And, as I mentioned in other posts, this can actually increase effectivness of ads for online stores. You KNOW they are there to sell you something so that's where you look when you want to buy something.

      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)

    by TheSHAD0W ( 258774 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @12:32AM (#8448893) Homepage
    Let Yahoo fiddle around as much as they want. If they break their page's usefulness they'll lose even more marketshare to Google. If they utilize the extra income to make their search engine turn up more cogent terms more quickly, they may turn out to be the superior model. Let the market rule.

  • Google/NYTimes reg. bypass (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @12:32AM (#8448895)
    Yahoo to Charge for Guaranteeing a Spot on Its Index [nytimes.com]

  • Pay for the internet (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nmoog ( 701216 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @12:35AM (#8448915) Homepage Journal
    As the amount of web advertising increases, and as people get used to paying for things on the internet, general web users are getting the message "There's no such thing as a free lunch". Darl believes it, everyone who works in advertising believes it, and everyone who pays those advertisers wants you to believe it.

    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.
  • I am getting a bit frustrated with the increasingly poor quality of google responses. It seems like an increasing number of people are writing pages and scripts for things to have some bullshit generic redirect page waiting to scoop your traffic up. With those odd assed 3 mile long URL that are built from some kind of search stat or reffer. Now that said these types of traffic leaches are VERY unlikley to actually PAY for something, I can see this as not neccesarily a bad thing. weed out some of the traffic

  • M$ will win this one (Score:4, Funny)

    by superpulpsicle ( 533373 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @12:42AM (#8448962)
    Yahoo search: gates
    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)

    by dupper ( 470576 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @12:42AM (#8448964) Journal
    I, a diehard Google supporter (fanboy, even), have cautiously tried out the new Yahoo more than a few times since the last Slashdot story, and was even considering adding it to my Mozilla address bar search. That would have been a major, major coup on their part, as I, a Google fanboy, hadn't even looked at their site since around '98, when I switch to Altavista (shortly followed by Google). And not only did they lose my business, but they lost all my less geeky friends who trust my endorsement (I've presonally switched at least a dozen users to Slashdot, Fark and Mozilla). And if they almost had someone like me, they were in good shape.But, now, I won't even consider it, again. They almost had me, but they got greedy and fucked it up.

  • bullshit on this! (Score:5, Funny)

    by pair-a-noyd ( 594371 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @12:47AM (#8448998)
    I'm fscking sick off all the gdmf commercial sites that float up like turds that won't flush.

    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)

      by nastyphil ( 111738 )
      So why don't you serach for something like HP Laserjet IIIsi +~parts +~diagram

    • Re:bullshit on this! (Score:3, Informative)

      by perimorph ( 635149 )
      Most people purchase ink refills far more frequently than they need technical specifications for a printer. I think it's natural that such sites would rank higher in the results for that search. It would be either nice or 1984-ish if a search engine could read our minds, but we're just not there yet. Although such switches would be useful, perhaps searching for HP Laserjet IIIsi "Parts List" would yield the results you'd like. The more specific you are, the fewer unwanted results you get.

  • Fundamental Flaw In This Business Model? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Cycline3 ( 678496 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @12:48AM (#8449005) Homepage
    Isn't there a fundamental flaw in the logic here? People use search engines to find information they want, not to look at who paid the most to be listed first.

    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)

    by rjamestaylor ( 117847 ) <rjamestaylor@gmail.com> on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @12:52AM (#8449026) Journal
    Yeah, right. Real heart warming, Yahoo.

    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 ... 6 months? Maybe once a month prior to that?

    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.
    • Google gives accurate results. That's the most important thing about Google search results: they're accurate.

      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]

  • ...but who defines "relevance"? There are often thousands of web sites on the Internet that are equally relevant to certain search terms.

    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)

    by Bill_Royle ( 639563 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @12:56AM (#8449049)
    Look - if a search engine was a schoolbus, Yahoo would be the short one.

    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)

    by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @01:02AM (#8449079)
    All media outlets, be they web sites, TV channels, radio stations, newspapers, or whatever else all have the same core business. They attract an audience using some form of content and then try to divert that audience to people who pay them called sponsors.

    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)

    by linuxtelephony ( 141049 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @01:03AM (#8449084) Homepage
    People that use the search engines appreciate NOT having paid placements confused with real placements.

    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.
  • I still gopher you insensitive clod!

  • Slashdot, that pillar of journalism. (Score:4, Informative)

    by X ( 1235 ) <x@xman.org> on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @01:10AM (#8449119) Homepage Journal
    Okay, let's correct all the things the slashdot summary got wrong:
    • Payments will not boost prominence. They will only increase the frequency of spidering. No impact on results ranking
    • The data feed is essentially like meta-data in the web page: Yahoo's engine determines whether it's trustworthy or not.
    • The for-profit and not-for-profit announcements are related, because they are both use the same technology to work.

  • New Buzzword! (Score:3, Funny)

    by telstar ( 236404 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @01:14AM (#8449142)
    It's not "Merchandizing", it's "Searchandizing".
  • I'd be worried about the companies that do pay. There are a lot of decoys, meta tag garbage etc., out there that exist solely to game the system, and bring in as much traffic as possible to junk domains. This is done without the consent or control of the search engine providers. I haven't seen Yahoo's rates, but those who mistakenly believe they can use the Internet as their own big billboard are in for a surprise; It isn't categorized like a phone book, where the publisher has a reasonably accurate assumpt

  • What about "REFERRER" headers? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by whoever57 ( 658626 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @01:18AM (#8449162) Journal
    And Yahoo will give paying clients detailed reports on when its users click on their sites and will help those sites improve their listings.

    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)

    by Junior J. Junior III ( 192702 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @01:31AM (#8449219) Homepage
    No one's forcing anyone to use Yahoo, I'm sure that as the links Yahoo provides its customers with become suckier, the customers will flee to other search sites that suck less. How is Yahoo becoming an advertising company that masquerades as a world wide web index infringing on anyone's rights?

  • In other news, the sky is blue... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mabu ( 178417 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @01:45AM (#8449275)
    Yahoo turned into a mafia site several years ago when they started charging people for listings in their directory, and then would reject sites if they were listed in other categories (after you paid a hefty non-refundable fee). Screw 'em. I sold off my stock a long time ago and don't expect them to go anywhere. It's too little, too late. Let's hope that Google doesn't get so mercinary that they blow their market share like Yahoo did.

    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)

    by Long-EZ ( 755920 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @01:57AM (#8449331)
    I made a couple of websites to test some web authoring software, and to help define a potential product I wanted to develop. I never submitted them to any search engines. Several months later, I started getting quite a bit of email inquiries, even though the website clearly stated that a product was not yet for sale. I quickly took the sites down to avoid advertising vaporware.

    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)

    by l0ungeb0y ( 442022 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @02:56AM (#8449599) Homepage Journal
    What I don't get is why this story is posted under "Your Rights Online"

    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 ./ ed not thinking before pulling the trigger?

  • First! (Score:3, Funny)

    by nick_davison ( 217681 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @03:29AM (#8449753)
    Now, Taco, that $100 gets me a guaranteed first post, modded to 5, that can't be modded down, right?

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