Paid inclusion services represent an opportunity to guarantee that your website will either be reviewed for inclusion within a directory or indexed by a search engine and can represent a fast track to inclusion for those willing to pay for the privilege.
Paid inclusion differs from pay per click, in that it affects a listing within natural (un-sponsored) search results and will not guarantee you a high search placement as this will depend on the optimisation of your site.
There is some dissatisfaction that these paid services are now opening up a gap between those websites able or willing to pay and therefore changing the balance of search results being offered. Indeed Google which does not offer paid inclusion has often highlighted the impact on relevency of such a service, yet this trend for providing a paid alternative in return for privileges is likely to stay and probably increase in the future.
Of the paid inclusion options currently available, these are our top recommendations in order of preference for UK websites to get the best value for money:
A listing on the Yahoo directory was a 'must-have' for any business website. These listings are slowly losing their importance as Yahoo itself has entered the search engine market, however a link from the directory will still improve your ranking on a number of major search engines and represent a good source of traffic in it’s own right.
A paid Business Express service has been available for some time (initially just for US-based sites) but this has now been extended as an optional submission route. Any UK-based website that falls into the Business-to-Business or Shopping and Services sections have to pay £199 for their site to be reviewed by an editor within 7 days (unlike the US version of Yahoo where the $299 charge has become a renewable annual fee, the UK fee however, remains a one-off charge)
The service is efficient and Yahoo are willing to listen to editorial appeals if the resulting site description is unsatisfactory. However, make note that this payment doesn't guarantee a listing, so you need to be sure that your site meets the strict Yahoo criteria. Once accepted, this investment is likely to be repaid within weeks - or days for some sites - due to the traffic it is likely to generate. You can still submit your site for free from the UK, but there's the risk that it won't be added for months, if at all.
The Overture Site Match service has the best coverage of all the current paid search engine inclusion services. This service applies to all search engines owned by Yahoo, and has recently expanded to take over the Inktomi Search Submit service. It will get your site regularly spidered for inclusion in the search results of:
- Yahoo
- AllTheWeb
- AltaVista
- MSN (Inktomi)
This package can be purchased directly from Overture or through a number of their partners. There is a hybrid pricing model of paid URL submissions which cost around US$45 for the 1st URL, US$25 for URLs 2-10 and US$10 thereafter and a pay per click element of between US$0.15 and US$0.30 depending on your industry sector. Site Match can provide you with fast track coverage in the majority of major search engines except Google. However your site will only get indexed and you still need to be optimised to enable a good ranking under your chosen key phrases. Its value is also questionable if your site is already well established in all the search engines and it is still possible for new or updated sites to get indexed in time without paying the inclusion fee.
Overture's Trusted Feed service may be an option if you have a large ecommerce site (500+ pages) containing dynamically created pages which cannot easily be spidered.
Overture sets up an XML feed that will deep index content pages within your site automatically every 48 hours.
Pricing is on a pay-per-click only basis and varies around an average of US$0.25 per click.
The Ask UK Site Submit service guarantees spidering for inclusion the UK Ask Jeeves search tool and costs £40 for the 1st URL and £25 for URLS 2-200.
The Ask US service allows indexing by the Teoma search engine which powers a number of smaller search engines:
- Ask Jeeves (US site)
- Teoma
- Excite
- HotBot
Pricing is US$30 for the 1st URL and US$18 thereafter. There are rumours that Ask Jeeves will soon drop the paid inclusion route but at present this is the only get listed in their search listings, quickly.
We can advise you on the value of these, and other, paid options for your website, depending on your target market and budget available. Find out more about how your website can achieve the best value for money by contacting us now.
Return to Materials introduction
The top search engines
How the top search tools work together
Options for paid search listings
UK search engines and directories
Partnerships between UK search engines and directories
European search engines and directories
The future of web search tools
