The Marketleap Report
Special Edition - Volume IV, Issue #2, March 2, 2004

The Launch of Overture Site Match™ and Site Match Xchange™ – The New Paid Inclusion Program to Get into Yahoo! Search™
by Keith Boswell

Today, Yahoo launches a new commercial paid inclusion program through Overture that feeds quality reviewed web pages into Yahoo's new search engine. Overture Site Match™ is now live at Marketleap to help marketers ensure their web pages are in the index that powers search results in Yahoo! Search and other web portal partners including Yahoo! Search, AltaVista, AlltheWeb, Excite and About.com. Site Match ties together Inktomi's, FAST's and AltaVista's paid inclusion programs into a single point of submission for Yahoo's index.

If you are a marketer looking to guarantee your website is available in Yahoo's index, you can submit your URL's to be reviewed for quality approval. Once your URL's have been reviewed and accepted into the program, your pages are included in Yahoo's general web index for up to one year.

Your web page's performance in search results is determined by its relevance to specific search terms. When a searcher clicks your page's listing in Site Match, you will pay a cost-per-click fee for that lead. You have the ability to control your budgets for the program and at the end of one year, you can renew your annual subscription that includes quality review.

Site Match is the direct evolution of Inktomi Search Submit, with the addition of inclusion into the FAST and AltaVista index. Search Submit had proven to be the most successful lead generation system ever created. By January 2003, the last time numbers were reported publicly, Inktomi paid inclusion had generated more than 500 million leads to participating businesses.

Site Match Xchange™ is the upgrade of Inktomi Index Connect, Inktomi's original cost-per-click paid inclusion program. It represents little change to the older program except for the additional exposure to Yahoo, FAST, and AltaVista traffic.

This program is designed to service websites with thousands of pages, compared to Site Match which is geared towards marketers with sites less than one thousand pages. Site Match Xchange uses XML to feed data directly into the index, offering marketers with complex websites and technical challenges an easy way in.

As Overture launches this new program, paid inclusion listings only account for 1% of the entire Yahoo! Search index. Their real success as a marketing platform has barely been tapped. Site Match provides a simple, single point of submission that should expose your site to more than 75% of active Internet users (Nielsen 2003).

Frequent refreshes of your web pages, every 48 hours, keeps your content up to date for people searching. Whenever you make changes to your pages, those changes are quickly reflected back in the Yahoo! Search index.

You also receive daily click and keyword reporting that can help you optimize the performance of your web pages. When you combine the keyword intelligence your business gains with the frequent refreshes, you can start driving more relevant traffic to your site by incorporating your keyword intelligence directly into your web pages.

Inktomi Search Submit, AltaVista Express Inclusion, and FAST PFI, all programs owned by Yahoo, will no longer accept new submissions and current accounts will be frozen now that Site Match has launched. Inktomi Index Connect customers are already participating in Overture Site Match Xchange™ and are unaffected by the change.

If customers of Inktomi Search Submit, AltaVista Express Inclusion, and FAST PFI choose not to migrate into the Site Match program, they will still remain in the program they signed up for until their current subscription expires. No additions or changes will be allowed to URLs in these older programs, but customers may permanently remove URLs from them.

Inktomi Search Submit customers are also receiving free inclusion in Yahoo! Search until April 15 th as a bonus for their participation in the Inktomi Search Submit program. After that date, they will no longer receive distribution in Yahoo! Search results but will continue to be listed in the portals they originally signed up for. AltaVista and FAST paid inclusion customers will not receive Yahoo! Search traffic and the distribution of their listings does not change as a result of the Site Match launch.

So now that we've explained what the new paid inclusion program is all about, you've got questions. Luckily for you, we've got the answers right here.

Does this improve the relevancy of Yahoo! Search and the other search engines that use Yahoo! Search results?
This program represents an advancement in the mixing of algorithmic search and human-determined relevance. Yahoo has been a market leader in human-based editorial search for years. This new inclusion program reconfirms their commitment to only allowing quality sites to pay for inclusion into the index.

Marketers will have to incorporate search engine marketing best practices at the point of publishing their website if they want to succeed within general web search results. If your web pages aren't uniquely identified, you will likely perform very poorly in this new program and you will pay for basically useless clicks. The program covers the cost of identifying and weeding out spam and helps maintain the overall quality of the program.

What are the benefits of this program to a small business with a limited marketing budget?
Very targeted leads at an extremely low cost. Your cost per click is fixed and you can invest as much in the program as you choose. If you begin to see real results that are impacting your business, you can invest more money into expanding the number of pages you have included.

Why the change from flat fee to cost-per-click pricing on top of flat fees?
Some marketers were benefiting from the program with simply astronomical success. The ability to continue supporting the traffic volumes and maintaining the editorial quality has risen to a point that cost per click pricing is the most logical way to fund a quality product for marketers. For marketer's sites that don't get a lot of clicks, they can be covered by their initial click pool. It also forces more marketers to get serious about the quality of their website and its ability to convert visitors into buyers.  

The flat fee editorial review covers the cost to evaluate and judge the websites relevance for inclusion into the Index. It also helps maintain the editorial quality of the Yahoo! Search Index overall. The ongoing cost-per-click helps the program maintain quality support levels for inclusion subscribers. One of the biggest benefits from this program is the access to technical experts from your reseller that can help you understand how to improve your website's overall performance.

What if I am already an Inktomi Search Submit customer and I just signed up?
You will receive free inclusion into Yahoo! Search through April 15, 2004. If you choose to sign up for Overture Site Match™, you will receive a promotional offer from Marketleap to upgrade to the new program. If you choose not to sign up with Site Match, you will continue to receive distribution of your URL's through Inktomi's network of search partners including MSN, HotBot, About.com and more.

What's the difference between this program and Yahoo Directory Inclusion that costs $299?
Yahoo Directory Inclusion gets you into Yahoo's Directory, but not their general Yahoo! Search index. With Yahoo Directory, you can only have one listing in a specific category of the Directory. With the new inclusion program driving the Yahoo! Search network, your pages can be relevant for the many variety of services, products and information as you choose.

• Site Match Main Page and Signup
• Site Match FAQ
• Site Match Pricing & Category Descriptions
• Site Match Xchange

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