January 5, 2001

12:40 PM

Where are search engines headed? Paid inclusion seems to be an increasingly popular strategy among search engines and directories. In addition to Yahoo and the ones listed in the article, Go.com and NBCi have recently implemented paid inclusion systems. Should we expect even more search engines to head in this direction? Does this worry anyone?
posted by Aaaugh! (10 comments total)

Note that Yahoo only requires payment for expedited inclusion or inclusion in the business category. And it's a fixed fee, not a relative thing.
posted by daveadams at 12:59 PM on January 5, 2001

Oh, and in Yahoo's case anyway, it doesn't worry me. It just signals a shift in the market. Getting listed in the directories and search engines is now more important to the websites needing promotion than getting new listings is to directories and search engines.
posted by daveadams at 1:01 PM on January 5, 2001

Very few search engines actually allow companies to pay for top placement on the site, which really annoys me. But then, I'm annoyed by Google ads, because they look a little too much like search results.
posted by Doug at 1:10 PM on January 5, 2001

Interested people may want to poke around the Sponsored Results thing that Amazon is testing. Sponsored stuff will currently appear on the all products search results page for just some people, not everyone. But anyone can read about the program via the above link.
posted by gluechunk at 5:50 PM on January 5, 2001

How is this any different from the Yellow Pages? You pay to have prominent space in there. They'll put a half-assed listing in for free.
posted by thc at 6:30 PM on January 5, 2001

It's quite natural in some cases. Why shouldn't Ask Jeeves get a placement fee for pointing to one particular stock quote site? In other cases ... less obvious inclusion in search results could be problematic.

But in the end a less useful search engine will lose traffic itself.
posted by dhartung at 7:19 PM on January 5, 2001

Google is my friend. If ads are displayed in the search results [example], they have high probabilities of being relevant.

Because 1) most ads are relevant; 2) they are text-only; and 3) by their background-color marked different from the actual search results, I really have no problem with them.

FWIW, how about thinking of AdWords [example] as advertising-for-the-common-people ?
posted by willem at 9:38 PM on January 5, 2001

Yup, I won't have the problem, since I use google almost exclusively. The way search engines work must be beyond me. For instance, my 6-month old 'blog ranks #6 on Yahoo if one searches for "Bangledash". Why? I have no idea. I think I might've mentioned Bangledash once, but there's no mention in the headings or any in-depth discussion about the topic. My site was never submitted to any search engine, but thru Extreme Tracking, I can find out what terms are used and where (Google, Yahoo, Lycos and MSN Search primarily).

Does anyone have any idea what these engines use? I know google rates on "links to the site pertaining to the subject", which again, would not explain 'bangledash'.

Peace,
Kevs

posted by Kevs at 12:38 AM on January 6, 2001

How is this any different from the Yellow Pages? You pay to have prominent space in there. They'll put a half-assed listing in for free.

One property of the net that's often pointed out as a Good Thing is its ability to allow a person working in his/her basement to compete with a megacorporation on equal footing. That seems to becoming less and less true as the years pass, and paying for search engine listings is a significant step in that direction. Perhaps this equality was always an illusion...
posted by Aaaugh! at 10:03 AM on January 6, 2001

For instance, my 6-month old 'blog ranks #6 on Yahoo if one searches for "Bangledash". Why? I have no idea. I think I might've mentioned Bangledash once,

Maybe it's because your site is the sixth most relevant reference to a misspelling of Bangladesh.

posted by daveadams at 3:01 PM on January 6, 2001