Overture and Yahoo

[newriver]

Oh Boy, overture got Yahoo as well!

[ihelpyou]

Yea, yahoo became worse than what they already were for results.

[newriver]

HHmmmm,
Me thinks I'm upset about this one.

[ihelpyou]

I think they show goto only on some searches... right? I do not see it on many.

[newriver]

They are not implementing it until Nov 15th, and it will be phased in over the two weeks after Nov 15th.

Gee, can't wait!

[ihelpyou]

Ya wanna bet they call the listings ... "featured"? or "partners"?

Anything but "Paid Ads".

[ihelpyou]

This certainly makes the value of Yahoo for the money of $300 go waaaaay down now for a directory listing, especially when "paid ads" from a "third" party are going to be at the top of results.

[ihelpyou]

Boy am I going to have fun clicking on all of those high priced "paid ads" from GoTo. <very evil smile>

ya know, do a click,.... disconnect and reconnect with another IP...... do a click.... disconnect and reconnect with another IP and so on and so on....... :green:

[Mel]

Yahoo now becomes even less relevant than it was before, if that is possible.

It seems to me that they must have shifted the management over to some super-soap powder-salesman type who knows nothing at all about the business of running a directory.

Now with Yahoo less than useless, and Altavista so far behind that is has to run just to stay behind, we had better hope that some of the new search engines develop into SEs whcih deliver relevant results, else we are going to see Google totally dominating the market.

If that happens SEO will be a much different business than it is today.

[ihelpyou]

Very true Mel. Heres to hoping WiseNut and others step up to the plate,... along with Fast. :cheers:

[newriver]

Overture has signed an agreement to become the Pay-For-Performance™ search
provider to Yahoo!'s millions of users. As a result of this deal and
the holiday season, Overture's Premium Listings™ advertisers can anticipate
a significant increase in high quality traffic. To get the benefit of
additional targeted leads for your business, you must be listed in Premium
Listings™ (the top three positions), and you should increase the funds
in your account.

Details on the Exciting News
Users who conduct searches at www.yahoo.com will see search results that
include Overture's top three search listings at the top of the page in
a section called "Sponsor Matches." Users will also see two Overture
listings at the bottom of the page in a section called "More Sponsor
Matches." This agreement will be implemented over the next two weeks,
beginning on Thursday, November 15, 2001.

How to Take Advantage of this Increased Traffic
You need to do two things to ensure you receive the benefits from this
new agreement:
* First, make sure your business is listed in Premium Listings™ (the
top three positions).
* Second, check that you have adequate funds in your account so your
account will stay online.

You can use DirecTraffic Center® [http://dtc.overture.com] to deposit
additional money into your account and increase your bids to ensure you
are in the top three positions so you don't miss out on any targeted
leads.

As always, we are dedicated to bringing you a high volume of quality
traffic to help your business succeed.

Sincerely,

Jaynie Studenmund, Chief Operating Officer
Lisa Morita, SVP & General Manager, Online Business & Marketing


Note: Due to Yahoo!'s policies, certain listings (including adult listings
and terms relating to tobacco, alcohol, firearms and prescription drugs)
may be excluded from the Overture search results on Yahoo!. Affected
advertisers will receive additional communications on this topic before
the end of the week.

[ihelpyou]

Yes everyone. No need to pay Yahoo for a review anymore. Simply pay Overture to guarantee a top ranking. They S*ck!

[newriver]

"they ****"
Careful Doug, you r not in the taunt/staff area.
:thebomb:

[MsSearch]

Now yahoo...who next??? :mad:

[Hope]

It is a sad day.

[Perfection]

Just one more reason to only use Google, as if another reason needed to be given.

[ihelpyou]

My clickity fingers are doing exercises and are getting ready for the MANY clicks on those high priced Overture listings starting tomorrow. I can hardly wait.

[MsSearch]

You are evil Doug.... ;) (i need a devil smily)

[Kal]

What a horrible shock to the system to receive this cruddy email from Overture in my inbox this morning. I bet Overture are jumping for joy over this one! Notice that the news came from Overture rather than Yahoo - I can imagine Yahoo are cringing in advance of all the negative press they'll get over it. Starting with my own newsletter today! :mad:

I wonder what Google think about it all, given their page results will be pushed further down the Yahoo listings? I bet they're having a field day at SES over this!

[Lead]

In the past it was an honor to get a good Yahoo listing.

Your nerves are rattled for a week waiting to see your result, and if you were even included.

It kept a lot of junk sites off, because they wouldn't qualify or didn't have the $300 to lose if it didn't.

Now the honor is all over.......

Anyone who can spend $19 on a program to build an amateur web site, and has $50 bucks available on his credit card, will be listed 1st guaranteed.

The amazing thing is that, they will jump past the sites that we all have spend hundreds of hours producing, with all our expertise.

This is truly a sad day.
Lead :balling:

[ihelpyou]

Oh yes. I already fired off an email to Yahoo yesterday and gave them my concerns over this. Everyone should do this.

[windybanks]

yes, it is a bunch of bull, to have paid money to get in there and get pushed even further down in results if you could even get in the most appropriate category.

remember how exciting and honorable it felt to get in for free?

[angelina]

ihelpyou - you seem to be a big LookSmart fan, but LS has had similar "featured listings" for some time now. Why is this any different? At least Yahoo isn't putting theirs at the top of their search page. You just seem to have quite a LS bias.

[newriver]

I read that Yahoo would be placing them between the sites and pages section, but I am still seeing both...maybe they are just playing with it currently....god i hope so

[Lead]

Just as I suspected. I have customer that has a kind of generic web site that is mainly for photos of cars, and it is in first place above, the real Yahoo Listings.
This site would not qualify for Yahoo.

Wow if you go to web page match on Yahoo the paid people will get all the hits.

With my Google tool bar installed I could not read anything but the top 3 sponser sites with out scrolling.

Try this search for instance "low cost domain names"

There is only 2 results so go to web page matches.

At least AOL smashes all 3 together at the top, and makes you hover over the names to see the descriptions.

Wow, try hovering over these and if you get even a better description.

Now you have to pay twice for YAHOO.

Lead

[ihelpyou]

Welcome to the forums Angelina! :hi:

The big difference is those listings are Looksmart's own listings. They are not from a third party. AND, no one ever searches at Looksmart anyway, so does not really matter what they put up there. Many search at Yahoo.

But of course, LS is a much better directory than Yahoo. NO spam in Looksmart. LOTS of SPAM in Yahoo. A big difference. You cannot spam your title is LS.... well, you can, but does not mean anything as LS and MSN do not put a lot of weight on your title. Yahoo puts LOTS of weight in the title so many will Spam the title with a fake business name in Yahoo with their keywords in it. If you do the same thing in Looksmart, it does not mean much.

I could go on if you want me to. :)

[MsSearch]

I see yahoo's 'Sponsered Matches' across all their results pages - Summary, Categories, Web Sites, and Web Pages...

We'll just have to get used to it for now...The agreement between Overture and Yahoo is good until April 2002 where Yahoo will roll out their own "pay for placement' plan.
Read about it here (http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-7866475.html?tag=ch_mh)

[MsSearch]

and welcome angelina :hi: