Yahoo! Announces New Paid Inclusion Search Engine

As of the 1st of March, 6pm Standard Pacific time, the Inktomi, AltaVista and FAST paid inclusion programs have been merged into a single service titled 'Overture Site Match™'. Overture is owned by Yahoo!

The new service supports all engines formerly part of the Inktomi and FAST networks, but also includes listings on Yahoo Search and AltaVista.

What is Site Match?

Site Match is Overture's new paid inclusion product which provides a very simple yet effective method for online businesses to be considered for inclusion in the main body of search results pages on multiple portals. By subscribing to Site Match, your web pages are reviewed for quality and submitted to a database that provides search results to Yahoo!, AltaVista, AllTheWeb, Overture and many other portals. Your listings will be included in relevant search results, providing your business with a source of targeted customer leads. The paid inclusion price structure applies only to commercial sites.

The Yahoo! announcement is based on Yahoo's new Content Acquisition Program (CAP), which will be run by Yahoo's Overture division. CAP has two basic components, one for smaller websites, known as Site Match and another known as Site Match XChange for larger corporate sites. Inclusion in either component will be more expensive and will include a cost-per-click charge of $0.15 or $0.30, depending on the competitiveness of the sector the site is listed under.

Please Note: Yahoo! Paid Inclusion does not guarantee ranking or positioning. It now becomes more important than ever to have your pages optimized before submitting to Site Match.

Site Match Pricing (for small businesses):

Submissions to Site Match consist of a review fee and a CPC (cost per click) component. The review fees are:

$49 for the first URL from any domain
$29 for URLs 2-10 and
$10 per URL if submitting 11 or more URLs.
$50 deposit (to cover cost-per-click charges)

In addition to the yearly review fee, there is also a per click fee of either $0.15 or $0.30, depending on the content category.

Tier 1 Categories: $.15 per click

Adult
Automotive
Books
Computers & Software
Dating
Education & Career
Jewelry & Watches
Music & Video
Office
Other
Reference
Sports & Outdoors
Toys & Baby Equipment

Tier 2 Categories: $.30 per click

Apparel
Electronics
Financial Services
Flowers, Gifts & Registry
Health, Beauty & Personal Care
Home & Garden
Professional Services
Real Estate
Telecom & Web Services
Travel

Site Match XChange™ pricing (for large companies):

Annual Review: None
Cost Per Click: Based on category content

Site Match XChange will accept all pages in a site from an XML feed detailing information about that site. Overture staff will manage these accounts and work with the webmasters in order to help them improve positioning under their targeted keywords and phrases. Fees will be charged on a pay-per-click basis. Read more about XML News Feeds.

What Does This All Mean?

All it means is that you will be included in Yahoo's natural search engine listings more quickly than if you do a free submit and that your site will be refreshed every 48 hours. It DOES NOT guarantee priority rankings for your keywords. You can submit your site for free at Yahoo.