AltaVista's New Express Inclusion Program
By Jill Whalen - June 29, 2001 (From the Rank Write Roundtable Newsletter)

By now many of you may have heard about AltaVista's new "Express Inclusion" program that they're doing in partnership with a company called "InfoSpider." Since this is hot off the presses, on-topic, and someone from AV actually called to give me the details of the program, I figured I'd let you guys in on the scoop.

First of all, those of you who've been long-time readers probably know that pay for inclusion, pay for play, or whatever other kind of pay for program is being dreamed up these days, is not something that I'm real gung ho about. (See my newly posted article: "Paying for Placement"). I told this to the AV rep. so that he would understand that my review of their program might not show them in the most favorable light. That didn't seem to bother him, so I gotta give them credit for that! I'm guessing that they just want to get the word out and figure any press is good press at this time. Fine with me, since it gives me the freedom to go into "rant mode," which is my favorite kinda mode (besides ala mode)!

Anyway, it appears that the AltaVista Express Inclusion program is something akin to Inktomi's program. It's live online as we speak and you can see it in action here: [http://www.altavista.com/sites/search/express_incl]. I haven't submitted through the program, and have no plans to do so in the near future. If they keep their word that their Free Add-URL will continue to exist and continue to work, then that's where you'll find me submitting my sites. According to Chris Kermoian, Director, Internet Search Services and Web Marketing Services for AltaVista, the free submit option will continue to be available (although, that's definitely NOT what he wanted to talk about!).

So why use AV's Express Inclusion? Well, according to Chris and their documentation, it's:

"the fastest and easiest way for small and medium-sized businesses to submit website addresses to AltaVista's index. The new service ensures rapid inclusion and weekly updates of specific URLs in AltaVista's index and offers customer tools to easily track and manage submissions."

In other words, what you're currently getting for free (besides those "customer tools" which we'll talk about in a moment), will now cost you. Everyone knows that AltaVista has the capability to add submitted sites quickly to their index because they've been doing this for free, forever. But now it seems that if you submit through their free submit form, your URL will be held for four to six weeks before being added to the database. How lovely. Since a good search engine optimization is a long-term process and not a quick fix, I'm willing to wait the six to eight weeks. I know, I know, they gotta make money somehow and who can blame them for that? But there's something about having free stuff yanked out from under you, simply because they've got you where they want you, that kinda irks me. I doubt this was AltaVista's intention when they started out as a search engine, oh-so-many years ago. I'm sure they felt they could make oodles of money through banner ads and the like. But the times, they are a-changing, and with it so are the search engines.

Let me go on the record as saying that as long as they truly do continue to add sites through their free form, then I'm okay with their paid program. Some sites may find it useful. My concern is that eventually the free form will be phased out, or phased out for commercial sites. Or even worse, it won't be phased out, but sites submitted through it will mysteriously never find their way into the database. Chris assured me that "at this time" they have no plans for anything like that. It seems to me, however, that if enough people don't see any value to the paid express program, AV will realize that something's gotta be done with their free submit option. Like I said, this is all speculation and my opinion. I will be testing the free option over the next few months to see if they were telling me the truth and sites will still be (eventually) added. Of course, as we all know, getting listed in any engine is not a God-given right, but a privilege, and any engine has the right to NOT add any site that they want. Ain't nothin' we can do about that, and of course, this is my fear of what will happen at AV. Only time will tell.

Okay, I *think* I'm done ranting. So now let's talk about what you get if you choose to use AltaVista's Express Inclusion program. On their main submission page you now have a choice to choose Express Inclusion or Basic Submit (hmmm...those names are kinda telling...with the first one you're "included" with the second one, you're just submitting...oops...that sounded kinda like a rant now, didn't it? Sorry!) Before choosing one or the other, here's how they summarize their Express Inclusion:

"Generate qualified traffic quickly and simply. Express Inclusion lets you quickly add up to 500 pages to the global database that powers AltaVista's search results. Weekly updates keep your listings fresh."

Interesting. Notice the word "quickly" is used twice. (Perhaps they're hoping to rank high under this keyword !) Also, I wonder how this Express Inclusion lets you somehow generate "qualified traffic"? Don't let them fool you into thinking that paying them is going to somehow suddenly bring traffic to your site (qualified or unqualified). You will still have to optimize your pages using the techniques we discuss here each week. (I think they should say, "generate qualified traffic to your optimized sites," as that would be more accurate. But again...I digress!) So next it says you can quickly add up to 500 pages. Well, that definitely sounds nice. Since I haven't actually added any pages using this program, I can't tell you exactly how this is done, but I'm guessing that you can give them a list of all the URLs and they will all be added (quickly!). (Remember when you used to be able to send an email to Infoseek containing your list of URLs and they would all get added? Ahh...the good old days!) If you have a large site and a listing of all your URLs handy, this could be a big plus for you. Right now with the free submit option, you have to put each URL in by hand, which is very time consuming. However, if your site isn't that big or you only have a few optimized pages, then I don't see much advantage to that aspect of their paid inclusion.

Next we see "weekly updates keep your listings fresh." Another nice function if you have a site with content that is constantly changing. We all know that AV has *not* done a good job lately of respidering pages and keeping the content fresh. However, many of us have tons of optimized sites with mostly static content that is NOT ever changing. In fact, most of the sites that I optimize for clients fall into this category. We rewrite, optimize the tags, etc., and then leave 'em alone! No need for this type of site to be respidered every week, in my opinion. But if you do have rapidly changing content, and/or you feel like you gotta tweak stuff constantly for high rankings, then the express inclusion may be for you. Obviously with ever-changing content you're not going to want to wait four to six weeks for respidering if you want it in their database NOW. And this weekly respidering can help you try to figure out what works and what doesn't as far as their algorithm goes. So if you or your site fits those categories, then you might want to go for it. That weekly respidering thing seemed to be the benefit that Chris was pushing on me. That, and the above-mentioned "customer tools to easily track and manage submissions."

So just what are those customer tools? Well, quite frankly, it didn't sound like much to me. From what I gathered by talking with Chris, you get to log into your Account Management page and see when your site has been respidered each week. Wow. The only other benefit as I understand it is that you will now have access to representatives from their partner, InfoSpider, via email, phone or live chat. Chris was really excited about this stuff. Now sure, having access and feedback from their reps may sound like a great thing on the surface, because we've all had trouble in the past reaching real humans at any search engine. It often seems like most emails that are sent to search engines go straight into their trash folder! However, consider the following: If this new program works like it's supposed to, then the need for customer service should be greatly reduced and/or totally unnecessary. You will no longer have to email them to see why your site didn't get added, because it should be added "quickly." No fuss, no muss, no need to talk to anyone. Therefore, I don't quite see the great benefit that Chris saw. Seems to me that if they want to tout this Account Management stuff as a benefit, they oughta give you some *real* benefits. Supposedly the "Fast Company" search engine will be coming out with their own paid inclusion program soon, and from what I read, they will be providing *real benefits* such as tracking clicks on your URL and that sort of thing. From my chat with Chris, AV and InfoSpider do not provide anything like that at this time.

And guess what else? Where Inktomi's program goes for a full year, AV's is a six-month deal. Here's the current pricing structure:

Unit Price for 6 months (USD)
1st URL: $39.00
URLs #2-10: $24.00 each
URLs #11-100: $19.00 each
URLs #101-500: $12.00 each

So what happens when your six months expire? That was actually my first question to Chris (and one I've often wondered about with Inktomi's plan). Do they simply delete your URLs from their database if you don't sign up again? Chris kinda wavered on this one. He seemed to say that they wouldn't be deleting URLs, but he couldn't give me any good reason why you'd want to continue past your six-month time period (other than the same old, weekly respidering and those wonderful account management tools). To me, the only real benefit of this program is in the fast inclusion upon submittal. You pay and you get in quickly. You don't pay and your site is put into purgatory for a couple of months. If you can't wait six to eight weeks, then pay the "bribe fee." But I surely can't see the benefit of signing on again when your time expires. I certainly hope that if you don't sign up with them again, that you won't suddenly find your URLs are missing. Cause that sure wouldn't be very nice, now would it?

The other thing to think about when deciding whether or not to pay for AV inclusion is how much traffic you actually get from AltaVista these days. Years ago, AV was a terrific referrer and we used to see lots of traffic delivered to our optimized sites. Nowadays, I see very few referrals from AV. We have the same high rankings as in other engines, but hardly anyone seems to be searching from there. As I mentioned last week, for the most part, we only see traffic from Google, Yahoo Web Sites, Yahoo Web Pages (Google), and a wee bit from MSN. That's about it. There's the occasional traffic from AV or Excite or Lycos, but it's not worth writing home about. Given this, is it worth paying any of those search engines to be included in their databases? That's a good question!

Jill

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