Yahoo!/Overture Site Match: A License To Steal
Unless you've been living in a cave somewhere, I'm sure you've
heard by now, Overture now offers the Yahoo! Search Inclusion
under its own branded name--Site Match.
According to the page info from Overture, submitting your site
to individual search engines is expensive and time-consuming.
But with Site Match you can reach millions of users by
submitting your pages through one program that powers search
results for top web portals such as Yahoo!, AltaVista, AlltheWeb
and other sites.
Summary of Site Match Benefits (according to Overture):
* More exposure for your site--reach more than 75% of active
internet users
* A simple, single point of submission to multiple web portals
such as Yahoo!, AltaVista and AlltheWeb
* Frequent refresh of your pages--every 48 hours
* Daily reporting to track and optimize performance
* Pricing--Hybrid of Inclusion and Pay-Per-Click
Site Match uses a hybrid of the old Inktomi paid inclusion
program and the pay-per-click search listings. When you start a
Site Match subscription, a non-refundable annual review fee is
charged for setting up your account and for quality review of
your pages. Once your pages are accepted into the program, a
cost-per-click fee is charged for each lead driven to your site.
URL Submission (non-refundable annual fee, per domain) First
URL: $49
Next 2-10 URLs: $29 each
11th URL and beyond: $10 each
Cost-Per-Click Fee:
Tier 1 Categories: $.15
Adult Automotive Books Computers & Software Dating Education &
Career Entertainment & Attractions Jewelry & Watches Music &
Video Office Other Reference Sports & Outdoors Toys & Baby
Equipment Tier 2 Categories: $.30
Apparel Electronics Financial Services Flowers, Gifts & Registry
Health, Beauty & Personal Care Home & Garden Professional
Services Real Estate Telecom & Web Services Travel
Okay, now that we've gotten the preliminaries out of the way,
here's the real deal on Yahoo!/Overture's Site Match:
It's a license to steal! It really is. Here's why:
Site Match isn't a true pay-per-click program, like Google's
Adwords or Overture's own pay-per-click program.
What's the difference? With Site Match, you don't have any
control over how much you pay for a particular keyword. I'll
talk more about that later.
Site Match charges you $49 to "review" your URL, at which point
you get included in the databases of several search engines,
including the new Yahoo! search engine. By the way, paying the
$49 annual fee doesn't improve your page ranking one iota.
It's also important to point out, this isn't the same thing as
Yahoo!'s Submit Express,where you have to pay $300 to have them
review your site for possible inclusion in their directory,
without any guarantee whatsoever.
With Site Match, you're guaranteed that your URL will be
included in their various databases, and will be spidered
regularly. This is how it works: If your listing is shown for a
particular query and someone clicks on it, you get charged an
additional 15 or 30 cents--over and above the $49 annual fee!
That's one reason why I call Site Match a license to steal.
Here's another reason:
If your URL already happens to be in the search engine
databases, you're now paying money for clicks you would have
previously gotten for free.
It's really a bad deal, because for most sites, paying more than
$.10 per click will end up costing you money.
If you've participated in a true pay-per-click program, you
already know that there are many keywords, especially generic
terms, that are worth little or nothing, so you'd never bid on
them to begin with--or you'd bid very low.
But with Site Match that control is completely taken away from
you because, the way the program is set up, you have to pay a
minimum of $.15 to $.30 per click, no matter what.
Personally, I think you should avoid Site Match like the Bubonic
Plague!