Inktomi's Announcement and Yahoo's New Inclusion Program

Inktomi subscribers today received an email foreshadowing things to come on Yahoo!. The email states that Yahoo! has transitioned to a new search technology and will soon be launching a new inclusion program. Inktomi customers will get a free trial period of listings, ending on April 15. After that day, they will have the option of joining Yahoo!'s program, for continued listing.

Information conspicuously lacking includes any details about how the new Yahoo! system will work, and how much it will cost. There is no information on the Yahoo! site at this time, nor in the brief news article I saw this morning.

From my perspective, it is to be hoped that Yahoo! does not choose to follow the lead of other search engines like LookSmart, and transition to a pure PPC approach. Pay Per Click is simply not feasible financially for many websites and webmasters, and threatens to turn many search engines into the exclusive domain of bigger businesses. This would be a great loss to small businesses and to internet consumers alike. I would be comfortable with Yahoo! returning to their old directory model, with human editors reviewing all sites, although it would be nice if there continued to be some form of free listings.

Comments

[Stephanie]

I heard Yahoo has their own 'new' search engine algorithms, similar to Google. Is this true? If so, how much can Inktomi help you on Yahoo?

[Laura Seeley]

Yahoo! has indeed unveiled their new search algorithm, patterned at this point after Inktomi's "Slurp" bot. Yahoo! Slurp will have some different features eventually and will probably go through several revisions in the early days.

Nobody can say for certain what will happen after April 15, when Yahoo! will stop using Inktomi paid submissions in their results. At that time, one of several things could happen:

1. Yahoo! could revert to crawling their own, existing directory listings

2. Yahoo! could leave the directory listings separate, and use their bot to crawl the web ("The Google Path")

3. Yahoo! could institute a paid inclusion very similar to Inktomi's existing system, and their new search bot would crawl those results while Inktomi continues to provide listings to their other partners ("The Inktomi Path")

4. Yahoo!'s new paid inclusion could be a PPC, providing pure paid results, and their new search bot would crawl those results while Overture continues to provide listings to their other partners ("The Overture Path")

5. Both Inktomi and Overture could be phased out over time in favor of Yahoo!'s new paid inclusions ("The Yahoo! Only Path")

How much good Inktomi will do at that point depends on which path Yahoo! chooses. Inktomi listings provide a relevant backlink for algorithms which factor that in (such as Google), so any open web crawler would like to see it. Otherwise, Inktomi's value will lay primarily in the listings it provides on its other search partners.

Existing Inktomi customers have all been notified of the coming change, and told they will have the option of transferring their accounts for uninterrupted service. How many customers choose to join Yahoo!'s new paid service will depend quite a lot on how Yahoo! goes about it in terms of pricing and listings. So far, there is no word from Yahoo! on how things will work.

Yahoo! owns both Overture and Inktomi. Smart money says they do not want to devalue their investment in either one by undermining it with their new system. It is to be hoped that Yahoo!'s ultimate plan includes both paid and free listings, an approach which seems very popular with web surfers, and helps SEO continue to be a viable option for those who don't have multi-million dollar advertising budgets.