The NEW Yahoo!

[Hope]

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/8082767.htm

It looks like Yahoo! is out for as much money as they can get. I am not sure I like this whole thing, especially the paid inclusion/ppc part.

http://ov.ineedhits.com/

Opinion??

[SensoVision]

wow that's interesting, thanks for sharing, I would like to try new Yahoo features myself and see if they would be really useful as they are promised. I also not sure that having biggest database would guratntee most relevant results, it's not biggest listing made this but algo.
I would also be interested in hearing experience of people who tried new paid inclusion.

[Hope]

...I would like to try new Yahoo features myself and see if they would be really useful as they are promised...

I would too, but I don't want to pay the price to have my sites there. I have been doing a lot of research on this. It scares me somewhat.

It looks and sounds like Yahoo is turning into another Look$mart. This bothers me a lot. I don't mind paying to be listed, but my sites have no advertising money and can't afford PPC. This will get too damned expensive.

It will cost my sites about $6k a year just for the current traffic they are recieving. The rankings are fairly good for these sites. If I was to get better rankings for more keywords, this price would go up. It doesn't make sense for my sites to pay this if I can't guarentee a decent ROI. We have found the Look$mart listings didn't produce the ROI desired, so I dont'  think I can sell this to them.

Also, I don't know if the results are going to be relavant. I would point to Overture results and Google Adwords as examples. I am sorry, I don't want eBay listed for EVERY search. eBay spends the money, but don't carry what I am looking for most of the time.

The other problem with the PPC model is you will find ONLY the shopping sites on the top of the listings and not the data sites.

Example:
I want the specs of my current motherboard because i want to upgrade my cpu and want to know if the motherboard can suppor it. When I do a search on the board name and model, all the ppc sites are going to show up. They may not have all the information I want. I want to know about the board, not buy it.

This is how I see things turning out. After all, Yahoo! is doing ppc to make money, so they will eventually get them higher in the search results.

[SensoVision]

these things scare me too, but I try to think positively... not much people would like to pay for listing so probably there would be some way to live with all these changes...

I want the specs of my current motherboard because i want to upgrade my cpu and want to know if the motherboard can suppor it. When I do a search on the board name and model, all the ppc sites are going to show up. They may not have all the information I want. I want to know about the board, not buy it.

I know this too good would like some search engine clearly split commercial and non commercial results so I can decide which one I would like to look, although all of them are mixing those results as for now

[Hope]

...not much people would like to pay for listing so probably there would be some way to live with all these changes...

This is not exactly true, especially in my industry. Do a search on hotels in any city. You will see there are literally hudreds of thousands of affiliates out there trying to get you to book your hotel rooms through them. These are the people who WILL pay for these listings. There are also the "Big Dogs" such as eBay, Travelocity and Dell who can afford to pay these fees.

[Hope]

Seems this is going to include Fast, Yahoo, AltaVista, HotBot, Dogpile and Goo. This will also include MSN for a short time. Seems MSN is close to releasing their own engine.

I was told by PositionTech that if you currently have the PFI subscription, nothing is going to change on the search engines (excluding Yahoo!) until the end of your subscription. Once the subscription ends, then you must either join SiteMatch or you lose your listings.

The person I spoke to at PT said that the free crawler will continue, but he doesn't know about indexing with the crawler. He wasn't sure if the sites picked up by the crawler would be listed in Yahoo! or any of the other SE listed above.

Sometimes I really hate being an SEO.

[SensoVision]

thanks for keep us informed, it seems more and more scary now... MSN doesn't give me much hope, the only thing that give me hope is Google and that it still be popular. Sometimes I'm really sorry about AV and ATW which become property of Yahoo, hope there will be some way to get inside them...

[spherica]

I really don't know how to completely comment on this.

First of all Yahoo states "Our base mission is to reach out and get as much information as we can'' then goes on to say about PPI and PPC, it really doesn't add up. How can it go ut there and find all the info, when you have to pay to be included. I don't think the crawler is smart enough to acknowledge this. Anyway I don't want to get into the technology of this.

I personally don't use PPC, I do however advice my clients on using this while I start working on their sites, get their name out there, and start bringing revenue from another stream. If no revenue can be brought in from PPC, then chances are there products aren't worth selling. If yahoo just uses every search to make money then thats what they are going to do, whether SEOs like it or not.

Its fine not to use PPC, but on the other hand if you say you have no money, then really what are you trying to sell, I'm looking at this from a full out business, there are many banks when you own a business, and one of those banks is marketing money.

Maybe I'm wrong, which I tend to be, but in saying that someone has a lot of money for using PPC, this doesn't make sence if you ask me, do you really think there are people out there that spend thousands of dollars on PPC, if they only bring is a few dollars ROI. If you make money by not using PPC, chances are that using PPC in other areas will sell to.

[Hope]

Its fine not to use PPC, but on the other hand if you say you have no money, then really what are you trying to sell, I'm looking at this from a full out business, there are many banks when you own a business, and one of those banks is marketing money.

I am dealing with hotels that set their budget a year in advance. Their budgets were just set in October for the 2004 year. This means that I have 44 websites that have not budgeted for this added expense. They will not have money for this added expense until Jan 1, 2005.

They have NO money for this. They cannot take the money from elsewhere, because it doesn't exist. If this new expense was going to increase their revenue above what was expected, maybe I could convince them to invest some money. This expense is not going to do that.

[spherica]

As we are slightly off topic about this I just want to add a few point about PPC.

In saying there is no revenue is no true at all. If there was no money in PPC, then why are there so many people doing it. I wouldn't do it (which I don't) but most importantly I wouldn't refer a client to do it. What your saying doesn't add up. PPC does work if its used properly, I mean you would never go after the keyword "Hotels" that is kind of redundant, since there isn't enough info for the quarie visitor. What I mean is if someone is looking for a hotel in Florida, and the hotel you are working for is in New York, of course there is no revenue.

However, I do have a couple of points in the marketing money side, of course your client would never tell you what they have in the way of marketing money, why is it any of your business.

If this new expense was going to increase their revenue above what was expected, maybe I could convince them to invest some money. This expense is not going to do that.

This is just not true, even if they just try $20 or $30 in Google, will it hurt?

PPC does work but it must be used properly to work. I realize I should have put a little more thought into a few points of my previous post.

[Hope]

I am only talking about Yahoo! changing to a PPC. These hotels rely on the traffic they are getting for free. They will not see an increase in profits from this new business model Yahoo! has created.

Example:

If the site gets 1000 visitors a month from Yahoo now for free and get $5000/month revenue from Yahoo now for free, they are making $3000 for FREE!!!

Now, yahoo has come along and changed the rules. They now have to pay $0.30 per click. They now have to pay $300 for these same 1000 visitors per month. They are losing money because they didnt' have to pay for this before.

They have lost $300/month for traffic they were getting for free. No, how can this hotel manager explain to the owner of the hotel that they are losing money, but generating the same amount of revenue.

There will not be an increase in traffic because they are now paying for Yahoo! traffic, so they cannot justify the added expense of this PPC.

[spherica]

I'm not trying to pick a fight, seriously. But if what you are saying is true and traffic stays the same they will only make $2700, because they have to pay the $300 for PPC.

OK sure.

Now, how can this hotel manager explain to the owner of the hotel that they are losing money, but generating the same amount of revenue.

Now lets turn the table a little bit. Now they have lost out on $5000 because they don't want to be bothered with paying.   What worse?  explaining where $300 went? or $5000??

To say it quite honestly they are not losing money if they are still gaining $2700, as much as it kind of miffs me about yahoo, in this day and age you have to spend money to make money.

[Hope]

I enjoy a good debate, so I am not taking offense to what you are saying. Please don't take my replies as such.

I agree with you, however, these hotels don't see it that way. They feel this will be far worse. They cannot even justify one more person to sweep the floors part time to these owners. I cannot convince them that this is the right thing to do.

Only time will tell how things will play out. Once April 15th comes and there are no more "free" listings, we will all see what needs to happen. It might be that the owners will have to suck up and deal with the need to pay.

I personally don't like PPC because I dont see the need for me. I think there are some fields where PPC is good and there are some where it is a waste of time and money. As an SEO, I have more clients than I know what to do with right now, so I won't spend the money on Yahoo!, but I will advise me clients that they may need to spend the money.

[spherica]

LOL sorry for laughing and I know what you are saying, but I can pretty much guess, when they are 5000 dollars shorter then they were, its time to go with PPC.

On that note, there is a need for PPC, lookng at this as an SEO that has clients with websites that are both old AND new. PPC is a nessicity in my opinion, what are site owners suppose to do while they wait for their site to gain expossure? Lets face it, you can optimize and get a hundred links, but that won't help with sales until the site starts to pick up traffic. And noone knows how long that takes.

As you say PPC may not be a need for you, but it may very well be a need to clients.

[Hope]

Oh please, I laugh every day over the stupidity of some of these people. They are afraid to spend a penny. Once they see what they are losing, they will cry and yell and I will laugh again. Then I will tell them to pay for the PPC and they will peasant and moan and pay. Then they will see that I know  what I am talking about.