Yahoo Site Match Paid Inclusion Program Misleads the Marketplace
Yahoo recently released their new Site Match paid inclusion program and quickly drew wide-spread criticism. The misleading and deceptive messages that Yahoo is sending website owners and emarketers is that in order to enhance your keyword rankings in Yahoo's natural search results, companies need only to pay a Site Match inclusion fee. The program makes one wonder if Yahoo will clearly identify all paid listings to users.
The Site Match inclusion fee is actually akin to a permanent, open, Pay Per Click invoice. Site owners and operators participating in the Site Match program will now pay for EVERY CLICK referred by the Yahoo search results. Yahoo's marketing messages suggest that Site Match is not entirely a Pay Per Click program.
Yahoo's marketing materials also suggest that Site Match participation results in enhanced keyword rankings on target keyword search results within the Yahoo search database, when in fact, it merely ensures a presence or inclusion anywhere within the Yahoo search index. Contrary to the marketing message implicit in Yahoo's Site Match promotional materials, inclusion in the program DOES NOT guarantee any particular keyword position in the Yahoo search results or 'enhanced' keyword placement.
Do websites still need to be open to the Yahoo-Inktomi Slurp and Archiver spiders in order to secure and maintain leading keyword positions in the natural search results on Yahoo? Do the Yahoo robot crawlers or spiders still need to be able to deep-index the website? If site design and site navigation obstacles are not overcome, is long-term search engine ranking success possible in Yahoo?
Don't jump into Site Match without first fully understanding that this program is not a turn-key electronic web marketing solution. This program ONLY provides Yahoo the ability to charge participants for EVERY CLICK received from their search results pages, and completely neglects the issue of search engine positioning on any other major search engine.
Before we address the other search engines that represent nearly 70% of the domestic search marketplace. Let's stay tuned to Yahoo and their most aggressive, profit-driven search engine marketing program to date. Yahoo intends to charge website owners participating in Site Match for EVERY CLICK received once an account is active. Will Yahoo searchers receive clear labeling of all paid sponsor positions?
Another important consideration for website owners and emarketers is the costly occurrence of fraudulent click activity. The opportunity for large scale, fraudulent, click manipulation of the Yahoo search results pages has now become larger than ever.
As Google cofounder Larry Page told the New York Times recently: "Any time you accept money to influence the results, even if it is just for inclusion, it is probably a bad thing."
Proceed with caution regarding Yahoo Site Match.
Jack Roberts
Peak Positions, LLC.
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