For Inktomi / F/u on Blam

[newriver]

Blam raised an excellent idea for Inktomi.

He said he would like to see an offer for webmasters to pay a lower fee for refreshes once a month instead of 48 hours.

I think there are a lot of customers out there who would much rather pay a lower fee for more pages to be included who don't need the 48 hour refresh.

I for instance may make a few minor changes here and there, but I can't think of many time where it was something I had to have in the index within 48 hours.

I understand with many of your competitors like Google and Fast most webmasters can count on having their pages re-indexed once a month for free, but there are also a lot of them out there that would be more than happy to pay a small fee to have the "GUARANTEE" that their specific pages will be in the index, and they will definately be refreshed once a month.

48 hour refresh works great for the CNN and wired.com's of the world, but it is a bit of an overkill for the small business website. Yet we pay it in many cases to have the guarantee we remain in the index.

If Inktomi is looking to reach out to the webmasters of the world, it may be a great idea to offer the small annual or monthly fee to guarantee inclusion, and guarantee a monthly refresh.

Great idea BLAM! and welcome to the forums.

[highman]

Good idea!

I would, and so would my clients, certainly have more pages in INK if the prices were reduced on the basis of a 'once a month' spidering.

[JuniorHarris]

Top idea!~:up:

I'm all for cheaper prices and extended services, always a plus in the customer service category!~;)

[Inktomi]

Thanks all for the good ideas. We're currently looking at our paid inclusion offering and evaluating ways we can both increase the value proposition to webmasters and also improve our customer service. All of these are terrific thoughts and you'll hear more from us in the weeks and months ahead.

Thanks!

[Blam!]

Thanks All for re-assuring me my questions were "valid ones"!!

For many of us "small business" owners, with websites that are 5-25 pages total, It's just to expensive to pay for every page, & in most cases $40-75 is the max many who I have talked to would be willing to pay, IF that $ amount got All your pages into the database for a year. 48hr refreshes are "excessive nonsense" in our case, & I would gladly pay $50 for only 3 refreshes a year, if that got all 12 of my pages in!!
There HAS To Be an Inktomi Program that "guarantees" your whole site (up to "xx" pages max) will be indexed within "xxx timeframe", if you sign up & pay this "$XX" fee.
Also when I first signed up, I was more "new" to this whole thing, & had No idea I was going to make myself be "deleted" from inktomi if I ever stopped paying!
I also tried Altavista's similar program, & did not renew after 6 mos due to lack/no difference in traffic (& terrible search results), but They did not drop my paid page, nor my other pages that were already in the index.

[ihelpyou]

There HAS To Be an Inktomi Program that "guarantees" your whole site (up to "xx" pages max) will be indexed within "xxx timeframe", if you sign up & pay this "$XX" fee.
I understand your thoughts and ideas and I agree with most of them.

However, the 'guarantee' would be kind of hard as a spider is only as good as the site in question. Sometimes a spider could not/would not spider certain pages. Those pages would have to be submitted individually. Now If Ink had a one-off fee for a certain number of pages in a site, that would be just dandy.

I certainly agree with the fact that all PFI thingies I have seen seem to be geared towards the big sites(plus 1000). ALL of my clients sites are MUCH smaller than that, so the benefit of paying for any page of a site is minimal.