Just wanted to get everyone's input on the $299 paid Yahoo inclusion. We haven't got around to doing it yet, but it is on our small marketing budget for Feb '03.

I justify almost all of my advertising on a 'per click' basis. As a general rule of thumb I don't spend more than $.30 per click. Don't laugh - it is a challenge, but it can be done.

So my question is - based on the $299/yr fee - and my $.30 per click target, will this be worth the money?

The second part of my question is what are the GOOGLE benefits of the Yahoo inclusion. I somewhat understand the relation between Yahoo's database and Google.

Thanks for your feeback!

It's definitely a personal choice, but I don't have a Yahoo listing and have no plans to get one. If you do well in Google then you do well in Yahoo and Google is free. Besides that, if you have a Yahoo listing there is a link under it which encourages people to click on which leads to listings of your competitors and I'm not too keen on paying $299 for that.

One more thing is that the $299 is not even a guarantee of a listing. It's just a guarantee that they will consider giving you a listing. :rolleyes:

I'll pass on that, thanks.

Red

One more thing is that the $299 is not even a guarantee of a listing. It's just a guarantee that they will consider giving you a listing.

Are you sure about this? I am sure some lawyer would go after this! You mean I pay them $299, and they 'consider' to list me? Then they better not charge my credit card until they 'approve' my listing.

Something is really wrong with this scenerio - I don't like it.

Joe,

Red is right about what he said. It is $299/yr to get them to review your site for inclusion but does not agree an inclusion. You could appeal if they do not include you but they still have the final say.

Check out their FAQs : http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/express/express-13.html

"Important: Payment is for expedited review only and does not guarantee inclusion in the directory, site placement, or site commentary. It only guarantees that Yahoo! will respond to your suggestion within seven business days, by either adding or denying the site. If your site is added to the Yahoo! Directory, you will be charged the nonrefundable, recurring annual fee. "

Basically is pay $299/year to get the chance of being included or do not pay and hope to get included by chance.

Yes, the Google listing is valuable. Our sites are not included in Yahoo per se but are searchable via their google's link up which in effect does not make a difference to my clients.

It is true - the $299 does not guarantee a listing. The fee is a review fee and you have to agree to this & pay before the review occurs. It is worth doing some research about Yahoo submission before pulling the trigger - there are lot of resources available http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/directories.html is one

Will it drive traffic & let you reach your target ppc of 30cents? i.e about 1000 clicks over the year? - It might, but most likely it won't. Yahoo now displays Google results and the directory is a bit harder to get at - plus you listing will be swamped by competitors - so in all likelyhood you will get a lot less than 1000clicks

I noticed that your site is not listed in DMOZ - submitting here is free (but can take some waiting time) - you should do this, it will bring you google benefit also - probably more so than Yahoo would.

The Internet is getting really bad.

What criteria are they using to join this elite $299/yr club they call Yahoo? How can I make sure my site is included if I don't know what they are looking for?

Is inclusion based on quotas per categories? Are they looking for a site designed a certain way? They need to give me a little more to go on than the 'COIN FLIP' at Yahoo to determine your important business listing with a big search engine.

I noticed that your site is not listed in DMOZ - submitting here is free (but can take some waiting time) - you should do this, it will bring you google benefit also - probably more so than Yahoo would.

DMOZ takes a while. Still pending, submitted a loooong time ago

I dont think its worth the cash. When you really look at it, that $300 could be used in PPC on overture, which might rank ABOVE the results on yahoo.

Just make sure you get listed in Google, and toss the extra cash towards overture.

Joe,

This year seems to bring the end to free inclusion. As a shareware developer, I was shocked to find out that Download.com now charges $79 each time we need to update the record and they still take the same 10 days to review the program to determine suitability for inclusion.

It looks like the companies are realizing that they cannot make money from providing free services or through advertising and seeking really desperate measure to survive, of course at the same time, isolating the bulk of their customers.

I am not sure what their criteria for inclusions are. You might want to just consider Google's inclusion and DMOZ inclusion. As for other advertising probably to pay per click advertising which you only pay for results.

I have several large Overture accounts, but I can't pay more than $.30/click as a rule of thumb. I can't covert well enough (as I shouldn't have to) to justify $2-$10/click - this is a little much for me to stomach.

Probably the right decision in the end is to spend the $299 elsewhere, but if you decide to submit - here are some guidelines


Your site must be finished. Do not submit your site if pages are still non-complete or under construction. All your links must work. Ensure that you double check this aspect of your site before submitting.
It is worth to ensure that your site works on Netscape 4.7 and Internet Explorer
Ensure that your company contact information is readily available.
If you accept credit card sales on your site, ensure you have SSL capability.
Ensure that you have terms and conditions and a privacy policy in-view and available on your site
Yahoo will normally check your WHOIS listing to check the name of your company. This name is what they will use for your title if your title does not reflect it.
Make your title and description professional and don't fill it with hype.
If your site is a sub-domain don't submit your site, you will most likely lose $299


With DMOZ - if you don't get any response, it's worth to send a very polite follow-up. Had to do this on a few occasions and it always worked.

Have you tried the Google's Adwords

Originally posted by intraweb
The second part of my question is what are the GOOGLE benefits of the Yahoo inclusion. I somewhat understand the relation between Yahoo's database and Google.Since most other aspects have been addressed, I'll just focus on this. There are some "Google benefits;" how significant the impact of a Yahoo listing is on Google depends on the category in which your site is listed. If you can be sure of what Yahoo page you'll appear, you can check the PageRank (using the Google toolbar) of that page and consider the number of other sites that will be sharing that page with you (the more links means more "dilution" of PageRank), and use those factors in weighing any impact Yahoo inclusion might have on your Google positioning.

The $299/year fee is really not worth the money. I paid the ransom and got pretty much NOTHING in return. Put your money in other advertising ventures.

As far as DMOZ there is a forum there that you can go to a month AFTER and ask where your site is and they will usually say there are "xxxx sites in front of you" or "you were turned down due to yyyyyy"

Can someone post the link to the DMOZ forum mentioned above. Submitted two sites months ago, no clue what is going on !

www.resource-zone.com

You would be surprised how many people are leaving yahoo and using Google.

Yahoo used to be a good search engine, I think its lost its touch, its more of a Portal now.

Everywhere you go, everyone is talking google this google that. I wouldn't give another penny to yahoo (they are even in the hosting business themselves)

Just so you know Yahoo's search results come from Google! Get listed high in Google and you'll be the same in yahoo...


Just a small tidbit of info!

Can I accomlish the Google listings routine for less than $299/yr that Yahoo charges? Maybe for $299/mo for a SMALL ad words campaign - paying ridiculous cost per click???

The thing is that with Googles Ad Words you are ensured click-throughs as you only pay if there is a click-through while on the other hand, the Yahoo listing does not even guarantee that you are listed and if you are, there is no guarantee that anyone would see it or click it.

the value of a yahoo directory listing seo wise is still their.
we did a test not that long ago to see what would happen if we got a good yahoo directory listing for one of our sites that ranks highly in google anyway.. (therefor it ranked highly in yahoo as-is).. we saw the site jump a few positions UP on Yahoo and the sub-pages on Google moved up a few places well also on Yahoo the optimised sub-pages still ranked nicely, and well hopefully when google recaculates the site's pagerank, we shall see if that's also boosted.
and well.. for $299 it was worth it.. i mean yahoo brought inktomi i see that it will be only time that yahoo will start implementing inktomi results into the yahoo search if/not above google results we shall see.. so the yahoo directory could still be a valuable investment if you do your research.

Yahoo is no longer the premiere search engine. You ask anyone and they will say Google. I wouldn't waste the money unless I had the cash to spare.

I mean, I got my sites into yahoo before they started charging, but most of my search engine hits are from google.

Yahoo technically isn't a "search engine," it's a directory. A human has to review a site before they place it in the directory.

When you search for a term in Yahoo, the results come from various sources:

Search Results: "xyz"

1) Directory Results - from Yahoo's directory

2) Sponsored Results - results from Overture

3) Web Matches - These results come from Google, soon to be Inktomi

Personally, I don't think an investment of $299/yr in Yahoo is worth it anymore. Depending on your industry and category, I think your money is better spent elsewhere. Focus on getting your site listed in DMOZ and try to get sites already listed in Google to link to yours.

Complete waste of money....Yahoo now shows web results first instead of directory results, which means your Google ranking is the most important thing.
I managed to get listed in Yahoo for free last year and got 100 visitors a day from Yahoo, as soon as they swapped to showing web results first my Yahoo visitors dropped to 5 a day if I'm lucky, make up your own mind but $299 for 5 visitors a day sucks if you ask me. I optomized for google and now I'm slowly moving up on my visitor count again.