The Axandra newsletter archive

22 April 2003

This week we're reviewing Inktomi's paid inclusion program and we're bringing you the latest search engine news about Google, Ask Jeeves, AllTheWeb and FindWhat.

Inktomi Corp., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Yahoo, is one of the leading providers of paid inclusion services. The Inktomi's paid inclusion program works this way: You pay Inktomi a yearly fee and then your Web site is guaranteed to be in the index of search engines such as MSN Search, HotBot, Excite and LookSmart.

Maybe you've considered using Inktomi's paid inclusion service to enhance the visibility of your Web site or you're already using this service. Is Inktomi's paid inclusion service really worth the money or is it just a rip-off?

What is Inktomi's paid inclusion service?

For a fee of US$39.00/year for the first URL and US$25.00/year for all further URLs, Inktomi will include your Web site address in its index.

The URL you submit to Inktomi will be visited every 48 hours so that there's always your fresh content in the index.

Inktomi currently powers parts of MSN, HotBot, Excite, LookSmart and other major portals such as Walmart.com. Inktomi has recently been acquired by Yahoo so your Web site is likely to appear on Yahoo in the future.

What's the catch?

At first, this sounds very good. You pay just a small yearly fee of US$39.00 and your Web site can be found at many big search engines.

However, you don't pay for a special ranking on Inktomi powered search engines. You just pay for the inclusion in the Inktomi index.

That means that you might pay US$39.00 (for a single URL!) and your Web site is still number 61.983 in the search results on these search engines.

If you want to obtain a high ranking on these search engines, you must make sure that your Web site is optimized for Inktomi's search engine software and for the partner search engines.

Is it worth it?

Inktomi's paid inclusion service - is it for you?

Please continue reading the conclusion at our Web site: http://www.free-seo-news.com/inktomi-paid-inclusion.htm

* Ask Jeeves rolls out improved search site

Yesterday, Ask Jeeves unveiled "Smart Search", enabling "users to conduct more effective searches by helping narrow, broaden or more directly answer user queries."

For example, Ask Jeeves can now directly answer questions for the capital of a country and recognizes when people are looking for pictures and responds directly with actual images.

In addition, Ask Jeeves now offers a picture search, related search terms for a query and a spell check. They now also deliver confirming questions when a search needs further clarification to deliver the most relevant results. For example, try searching for the term "career".

* FindWhat announces set of campaign automation tools

FindWhat announced "CruiseControl", a set of four tools to help its advertisers to manage their pay per click campaigns. Among the tools are one to automatically optimize keyword bids and a tool to calculate the ROI (return on investment) by keyword and by campaign.

In addition, FindWhat announced that its minimum bid price will increase from US$0.01 to US$0.05 (effective September 1, 2003).

* Google to phase out premium listings?

Google offers "premium sponsorships", these are two enhanced text links at the top of the Google results page. Rumors on the webmaster forum WebmasterWorld.com have it that Google will integrate both the Premium Sponsorships and the AdWords programs into a single CPC (cost per click) program. There's no official announcement from Google yet.

* AllTheWeb adds dictionary lookup

AllTheWeb now performs a dictionary lookup on dictionary.com for each search term and creates a link for it. Unfortunately, you must know where to look to discover this link. Near the top of the search result page, click the underlined search phrase.

* "Google is shining example of dot-com survival"

This article summarizes the current situation at Google. "They're prepping themselves for some sort of financial gain," said Denise Garcia, an analyst with technology research company Gartner Inc. She predicts some sort of major "corporate event" for Google within a year.

* Google's daily menus

The Weblogger Ben Davenport posts the daily menus of Charlie Ayers, former chef for the Grateful Dead and current head chef for Google.

* Submitting your Web site to search engines is not enough

Many webmasters submit their Web site URL to search engines and wait for the traffic to come. Unfortunately, this won't work.

Submitting your Web site to search engines is pointless if your Web pages aren't optimized for search engines. Your Web site are likely to be listed at position 314,527.

Before submitting your Web pages to search engines, you must make sure that they are optimized for your important keywords and for the search engine you're targeting. Many Web sites fail because they're designed in a way that prevents people from finding it. Many sites are virtually invisible to search engines.

You're missing a lot of traffic if your Web site isn't properly designed and optimized for high search engine rankings. If your Web designer was not a search engine optimization expert, then you're losing a lot of revenue.

We recommend optimizing your Web pages with our award- winning search engine optimization tool IBP before submitting. Then you can be sure that your Web pages will get the best possible search engine rankings. You can download a trial version of IBP here.

* Check your link popularity

What's the link popularity of your Web site in the popular search engines? Find it out because all major search engines use link popularity to rank Web sites. Download the freeware Link Popularity Check.

• About Google results on Yahoo and AOL
  
  
• Google AdWords partner list
  
  
• Cookies required?
  
  
• How to check if a single Web page is indexed by Google
  
  
• How to optimize for Google's image search

The Search Engine Facts newsletter is free. Please recommend it to someone you know.

You may publish one of the articles above on your Web site. However, you must not change the contents in any way. Also, you must keep all links and you must add the following two lines with a link to www.Axandra.com: "Copyright by Axandra.com. Internet marketing and search engine ranking software ."

All product names, copyrights and trademarks mentioned in this newsletter are owned by their respective trademark and copyright holders.

Back issues:
http://www.free-seo-news.com

Copyright © 2005 Axandra / Voget Selbach Enterprises GmbH

Back to our newsletter archive