THE DEATH OF INKTOMI; OR, HOW THE INTERNET BECAME THE YELLOW PAGES

What a difference a day makes! And the difference is all bad news for those of us who like our internet free and open.

Today, I went to add a site to Inktomi, only to find that it is now Overture Site Match. There was no warning that this was coming so soon; in fact, very little warning that it was coming at all. I have an email from February 18th explaining that Yahoo! would be unveiling their new search system, and would continue to list Inktomi sites until April 15 as a courtesy. After that date, Inktomi subscribers would be given the option of signing onto Yahoo!'s new program. It did not say that Inktomi would cease to exist. I was under the impression that Inktomi would continue along, quietly feeding results to smaller search engines. I was mistaken. I also labored under the obviously-too-optimistic hope that Yahoo! would offer free web search results, using their own algorithm. Again, I was mistaken. Yahoo!'s search results, all of them, are now PPC. You pay for the listing, just like people pay for Yellow Pages listings. If you don't pay, you aren't there. The more you pay, the bigger the typeface, or the ad; the more you pay, the higher your ranking.

Here are the facts:

1. Inktomi Search Submit listings have ALL been taken off auto-renew. They will expire, and when they do, you will have to sign up with Site Match. This costs $49 for the first site, plus a $50 deposit, and you are assigned a CPC (the ones I looked at were either $0.30 or $0.15, depending on the category).

2. According to Yahoo!'s website information, "web results" will start drawing from Site Match only, starting April 15, and Site Match works as described above. In other words, Yahoo! is now a pure PPC engine. The days of a free Yahoo! listing are over.

What does this mean?:

It means that Inktomi is dead. Existing listings will be allowed to expire, and this time next year, there will be no Inktomi. Period. It means that Inktomi subscribers have been blindsided, asked to trade a $35 once-a-year subscription for a $100 downpayment plus monthly fees based on a flat-fee CPC. If you think this sounds familiar, it does: Think "LookSmart" this time last year. It is true, and perhaps worth considering, that LookSmart is now a virtual non-entity in the SEO world, with little or no visible presence, and a string of layoffs and lost revenues behind them. They aren't too popular with their former subscribers, either.

It also means that there is no such thing as a free listing on Yahoo! anymore, with the possible exception of submitting to the Directory under non-profit status, and waiting up to 6 months for that listing to be reviewed. With Overture doing sponsored listings and Site Match doing "web results", Yahoo! has just become the realm of big business. Forget about non-profits, forget about private, fun, informative websites. You won't be seeing them on Yahoo! anymore. Can the days of charging for their email accounts be far behind?

It means that many other search engines will no longer offer "free" listings, because many of them draw from Inktomi results, most notably HotBot. Imagine, little HotBot is now a full-fledged PPC. And it's not even owned by Yahoo! At least, not that I know of... but at the rate Yahoo! has been buying up web properties, it might not be long.

Other things to ponder:

What will happen with MSN now? MSN has been using Inktomi results as an interim solution, to tide them over after dumping LookSmart, until their own search is unveiled. That date is still not set, and since the head of that division quietly left his job after only 4 months, I'd say that there's probably some behind-the-scenes turmoil. Will MSN keep using competitor Yahoo!'s paid results, for which they get no profit, or will they switch to something else?

Will this strengthen Google? Will we see a sudden breakout from a previously small and unknown search engine that has no PPC listings? The backlash against the new "paid only" face of Yahoo! might be vicious. Internet purists are already upset over having money creep into so many aspects of the internet. Many already shun the major search engines precisely because they have no desire to see only "paid for" listings, which they regard as paid advertisements rather than websites. Many have already flocked to the smaller engines, willing to tolerate the possibility of spammed listings in exchange for the knowledge that nobody is buying them.

What will happen to Yahoo! Directory results? If nobody is going to see them anyway, why would anyone pay $299 every year, when they are already paying more money than that for the more-visible listing? I foresee the death of the Yahoo! Directory before too long, if this continues.

Many businesses have gone on the web because of the extremely high potential ROI (return on investment). If you drive the prices through the roof, it's no longer a great bargain. Will businesses start pondering the relative ROI of traditional print media and other marketing, and slowly abandon the internet as simply not cost-effective in many cases?

It's not that I am opposed to seeing paid listings. After all, I do SEO. However, I still want to see an internet where money is not calling all the shots. I still want an internet where private sites can be found on search engines, and some sites really can be there simply by virtue of being informative or fun. I still want to see an internet where people will create an informative and fun website with no thought of personal profit.

A personal plea to Yahoo!, MSN, and all other search engines:

Yahoo!: Please rethink your current policy of only listing paid sites. Is this really what you think the internet public wants? Did Google's huge popularity not demonstrate the opposite? At least when your main search results were from your paid directory listings, people could still default to the Google listings at the end to see non-commercial sites. Believe it or not, many people like to see these sites.

MSN: Please don't follow Yahoo!'s example and make your entire search based on PPC listings. Give the public a real, viable alternative to heavily financed commercial listings. At least consider a low-cost once-a-year payment, such as Inktomi used to offer.

Google, HotBot, AltaVista, et al: Stand firm in the face of a trend which will forever alter the face of the internet. If we all wanted to browse the Yellow Pages for information, we wouldn't have flocked to the web in record numbers. Make sure that we still have some alternative, some place where the worthy can get attention simply for being worthy, and not for the size of their wallets.

As an SEO, my job is to get my clients listed. Please don't force me into the position of only being able to help someone with a big advertising budget, while I watch worthy websites fall into search engine Siberia because they just don't have the budget to compete. I would greatly miss working with some of my quirkier clients, but they'd burn through their annual budget in a month at these prices. As an internet surfer, I beg of you not to give me only slick and superficial commercial ads, always with a hidden agenda of selling you something, instead of worthy and informative websites.

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