Beta PFI of Teoma/Ask

[ihelpyou]

Well, my question is, Is there going to be a 'free crawl' and indexing of any pages that are NOT paid for? If not, this SE will go down the tubes Extremely Fast! Here are some details of the Ask.com/Teoma beta program. The partner is ineedhits.com:

Features of Site Submit (Beta) (order form)

For Webmasters and Web Site Owners, you receive:

Fast 7 day (Beta), inclusion into the database powering Ask.com and Teoma.com.
Your Web Page will also be refreshed every 7 days.
Your URL (Web Page) stays included in this powerful database for 15 months.

Pricing (order form)

Pricing is on a per URL basis as below. It is acceptable to have multiple domain names in one order. For large orders please use our batch processing facility.

Number of URLs included: Price per URL (USD):
1st URL $30.00
URLs 2 - 1000 $18.00 each

Pricing Examples:
3 URLs would cost $66 = (1 x $30) + (2 x $18 ).
7 URLs would cost $138 = (1 x $30) + (6 x $18 )

Service Fees are non-refundable. Note: Subscription Period is 15 months.
Comments?

Funny that both my sites are already indexed with quite a few Url's in. Are they going to drop the pages they have that are not paid for?

Almost ZERO traffic from this SE anyway. I can't understand how or why the engine feels that people are going to flock to them to give them money for a service that yields very little visitors to begin with. Sheesh.

[ihelpyou]

Their spam policy is along the lines of Google:

http://ask.ineedhits.com/programterms.asp#spam

But they DO allow one doorway page per domain. In other words, they are just like Inktomi that way in that MANY spammy doorways will be their index. I find this statement in their spam policy a contridiction:

Fabricated pages designed to lead users to other web pages
I thought a doorway was 'fabricated' and DOES lead visitors to other pages? They allow these 'doorways', then turn around and say a doorway is spam. LOL

[MakeMeTop]

Tend to agree with you Doug - but I'm pretty sure I'll be coughing up :(

Ask UK is very big here - don't ask me why (no pun intended). Consistently in the top 5 search sites - so if Teoma replaces Direct Hit on the results (which it will) then in we have to go (probably).

On the upside, I have seen a growth in traffic from Ask US from sites I have in Teoma which are free since the Jan changeover. My feeling is that these will remain - making these sites the basis of their version of a 'best of web' index. If they didn't have these sites their link-pop type algo would fail dismally as they would have no quality sites in order to base their linking strategy on :)

[ihelpyou]

It makes NO sense to me at all to not have a crawler (robot) that will continue to add pages for free.

They will fail at this business model.

This is the very first sentence in the paragraph that talks about the benefits of 'paying' for inclusion. This does not mean getting ranked, but simply getting indexed. A big difference.

Webmasters and Website Owners find it increasingly challenging to have their Web Pages discovered by search engines and portals on the Internet.

Does anyone have difficulty out there simply getting indexed in the search engines? NO.

[ihelpyou]

What the heck does this mean?
Can I submit doorway or dynamic pages?
The search engine powering Ask.com and Teoma.com permits the use of doorway pages in the Search Engine database. Ask Jeeves will allow one doorway page per destination, as it is recognized that some pages are not spider-friendly. More than one doorway to the same Web Site may be considered spam, and may lead to removal of the Web Site from the Search Engine Database.

Click here to view Ask Jeeves' Spam Policy.

The search engine spider will be able to crawl and index pages that are dynamically driven from URL parameters.
They first say a spider cannot crawl dynamically driven pages, but then say they can? LOL

[Farhan]

Originally posted by ihelpyou
Does anyone have difficulty out there simply getting indexed in
the search engines? NO.

Doug,
Places like Askjeeves were really tough to get in. A very long process of first getting in Dmoz, then in DIrectHit and then in Askjeeves ( forget about mailing askjeeves directly).

I've personally had tough time in getting into askjeeves. If this offer had been a few months before, I would have been quite pleased to pay them.

[ihelpyou]

Yes. Very true. But now it is Teoma who have a regular crawling robot and who have added sites anyway to the database. Because of this, I don't understand why the 'pay' only option? They will alienate 70% of the internet.

[Hasenfefer]

Isn't is, build traffic THEN start charging for services, not charge then build? I think they have it backwards.

[newriver]

I paid the submission fees for Ask/Teoma and now am number 2 for the targeted search phrase...up from #32 without paying. Askjeeves still has some decent traffic, but who knows what they will send when the Norelco shaving commercials stop...lol.

[OptWizard]

I agree how can a SE charge and no traffic comes from it?

[Advisor]

I'm sure they won't be removing sites that don't pay. It will probably be just like the rest of them. They want you to pay, but if you don't, you really don't lose anything other than the 48 hour respidering.

Our RW case study site is currently number 1 for their keywords and didn't pay, so I don't think paying will be necessary as a rule. Thus said, I'm starting to lean towards paying for some of these PPI places for my clients, only because it will be a way to show quick results. I figure I can easily build it into my pricing for most clients. Not sure if Ask/Teoma is worth getting in at the moment, but it always looks good to show high rankings for as many places as possible!

Jill

[prebot]

So what's the general feeling here - pay the $30 an see if any traffic materializes and then submit more?

A friend and I were going to try it too.

[Advisor]

I figure I might try it for new sites that I optimize, but I wouldn't pay for any existing sites. I just want to be able to show clients quick results, so PPI seems to be a good idea right now.

Jill

[prebot]

I think I might try it too; don't know if it will produce anything but for $30 - that's dirt cheap.

I'm trying to help a friend of mine too with some inclusion, he's getting lots of traffic but at the expense of a few thou a month for pay-per-clicks. It works great but seems like some inclusions might help him save a few bucks and still maintain or increase traffic.