Yahoo Bulks Up With Paid Listings

Yahoo plans to unveil a new program designed to improve the size of its Web index and the relevance of its search engine results, the Sunnyvale, California, company has announced.

The Content Acquisition Program will allow free and paid inclusion of Web sites in the Yahoo index, Yahoo said.

CAP's paid inclusion portion, called Site Match, will be powered by the Yahoo subsidiary Overture. For a fee, Yahoo will ensure that its index includes a particular Web site.

Site Match has no effect on where a participating Web site ranks in search query results. And Yahoo will not distinguish in query results whether a listed Web site was included in its index for a fee or as part of Yahoo's free Web crawling activities, a spokesperson for Yahoo said.

Confusing Users?

Some observers feel that search engines should make this type of disclosure, while others feel that it's a trivial matter for users.

"We're on the side of it not being much of an issue. We've surveyed consumers on this topic and overall just 20 percent of online adults express any concern about mistaking paid listings for natural search results," said David Schatsky, a Jupiter Research analyst. "This new program should definitely provide a nice revenue stream to Yahoo. I don't expect any consumer backlash from it."

Yahoo does separate from its main query results what are known as sponsored search results, and clearly labels the latter as such. Sponsored search results resemble online classified ads that companies pay search engines to display along with relevant search results. "That's a good practice to do that type of full disclosure because placement in sponsored listings is clearly promotional in nature," Schatsky said.

Ultimately, what search engine users want are relevant results, and they don't care very much whether those are in the main query results list or in the sponsored links section, Schatsky said. "The name of the game for Yahoo in search is ease of use and relevancy. If they provide those two elements, they will be successful with consumers," he said.

The Bottom Line

Site Match subscribers who submit fewer than 1000 URLs must pay an annual submission fee: $49 for the first URL, $29 for each of the next nine URLs, and $10 each for URLs number 11 through 999, the spokesperson said. On top of that, a subscriber must pay a fixed cost-per-click of either 15 cents or 30 cents every time a user clicks on one of the subscriber's listings. Businesses that submit 1000 or more URLs participate in the Match Xchange program at no annual fee and a fixed cost-per-click of up to $1, depending on content category, she said.

Site Match will group under one umbrella paid inclusion programs from companies that Yahoo has bought, including Inktomi, AltaVista, and FAST; and clients of those programs will be transferred to Site Match, Yahoo said in its Tuesday release.

Meanwhile CAP's free inclusion channel is called Public Site Match. Participants include government, academic, and nonprofit entities such as National Public Radio, the Library of Congress, and the National Science Foundation. These will be able to add their online content to the Yahoo index. It's not a do-it-yourself submission process, the spokesperson said; interested parties need to contact Yahoo to submit their Web sites and content.

She couldn't say whether CAP is available only in the United States or also abroad.