AltaVista offers paid Express Inclusion Plan

June 23 2001, update June 26 and July 11 2001

AltaVista follows in the footsteps of Inktomi and Fast and introduces a new paid inclusion service. Pandia discusses the pros and cons of paid submissions.

The search engine Inktomi (which powers parts of HotBot, AOL and MSN) has since last autumn offered a paid submission plan called Search/Submit, guaranteeing regular spidering of selected webpages for a certain fee. Recently Fast did the same, launching its PartnerService program.

The new AltaVista Express Inclusion Plan

Given any search company's need for revenue, AltaVista has been expected to offer a similar service. The AltaVista Express Inclusion Plan is now up and running.

Webmasters that want to make sure that their pages are included in the AltaVista index, may pay AltaVista to revisit them on a weekly basis. AltaVista will offer extensive customer support.

AltaVista has partnered with a company called infoSpider to offer this service.

Subscribers will receive feedback about each page they submit, and will be notified when the page is included in AltaVista's index. Subscribers will also be provided with their own personal Account Management Center where they will have access to reports and transaction history.

AltaVista's Express Inclusion service is priced for a 6-month subscription period.

1st URL costs USD 39.00
URLs #2-10 $24.00 each
URLs #11-100 $19.00 each
URLs #101-500 $12.00 each

Express Inclusion allows you to submit up to 500 of your site's URLs.

The price is a bit stiff compared with the competition. The price is covering six months only, not one year as in the Inktomi plan. Moreover, the AltaVista spider will revisit sites on a one week basis, not every 48 hours as in the Inktomi program or on a daily basis, as in Fast's offer.

AltaVista will probably have to demonstrate that they can deliver enough traffic in order to entice search engine optimization experts into taking part in this program.

The free submit option remains, but AltaVista has removed the program offering inclusion in the AltaVista Directory. This directory is a clone of the LookSmart directory.

AltaVista has probably removed this offer because of LookSmart's new competing paid inclusion and ranking plan. LookSmarts "LookListings" are offered in co-operation with the Inktomi search engine, one of AltaVista's rivals.

The advantages of paid submissions

Webmasters all over the globe has been discussing the usefulness of such schemes. Taking part in the AltaVista, Inktomi and Fast programs does actually not guarantee a better ranking in the result listings.

However, your pages will be revisited on a regular basis. Webmasters that fine tune the design and the copy of their pages in order to satisfy the demands of the current search engine algorithm (i.e. the rules that decide which page is to be listed first for a certain search query), will find this very useful.

They may upload a new version of the page, and check the new ranking a couple of days later to see if the changes have had any effect. If they do not take part in the paid submission plan, they will often have to wait several months before the changes take place. By that time it's probably too late.

There is also another advantage to taking part in such programs. Inktomi operates several different search engine databases, and fetches results from the core database first. In order to get a good listing for regular search queries you must try to get your pages listed in this part of the index. By taking part in the Inktomi Search/Submit program, you are more likely to get such a listing.

You are probably less likely to achieve this effect when taking part in the Fast service, as Fast's goal is to develop a database that covers "all the web, all the time".

We doubt that participation in the AltaVista program will lead to any form for "core" listing, but as long as the pages are free for spam, they will be guaranteed a listing in the AltaVista search engine index.

This is how AltaVista presents the inclusion program benefits:

• Drives qualified traffic to your site.
• Fastest method of having your URLs included in AltaVista's search results.
• Ends the need to continually submit URLs to AltaVista.
• Because your URLs are refreshed weekly, you may frequently modify your site and have these improvements reflected in AltaVista results ranking.
• You can check the status of your URLs at any time through your personal Account Management Center.

Spam vs. fine tuning

Now, some may argue that AltaVista is facing a paradox here. After all, AltaVista has been one of the main opponents of spam, i.e. techniques that manipulate the search engine algorithms in order to achieve better rankings for webpages.

The main reason for taking part in the Express Inclusion plan will actually be to be able to adjust webpage content and design in order to improve results for selected keyword phrases, and that's spam, isn't it?

Well, actually, no. AltaVista is one of the few search engines that tells webmasters something about how their search engine works, i.e. they give certain hints as to how the search algorithm decides on webpage ranking.

Among the main tips are including your keyword phrases in the title-field of the HTML-code, in headlines and in the first paragraph of regular text. Obviously AltaVista feels that search engine optimization is all right, as long as you play by their rules.

Using techniques that are not included in these rules, however, are considered spam and may be punished heavily. The worst case scenario is having sites banned from the search engine index.

Hence the Express Inclusion plan may be interpreted as another step in the direction of a search engine/webmaster partnership, where they try to find a common ground that satisfies the need of both parties: the search engine 's need for relevant results and revenue, and the webmaster's need for good listings. Now, that may be a good thing!

AltaVista
AltaVista Express Inclusion
Search Engine Forum transcription of chat with Infospider, the company administering the AltaVista program
Infospider AltaVista Express Inclusion
LookSmart's new paid inclusion program
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