Yahoo have given notice that they intend to drop their Paid Inclusion program, now known as Search Submit Pro. As of 31 December 2009 this, always controversial, option will cease to be available.
Paid inclusion has always been a controversial issue. The ability to pay for a listing in the natural search results has, for some, reduced the value of the Yahoo search engine. To a great extent this opinion has stuck. Despite Yahoo affirming that Paid Inclusion only guaranteed a listing, as opposed to a better rank, many in the SEO industry remained unimpressed.
The effect of this move will be significant. For Yahoo, Paid Inclusion was not a big earner, being worth around $100M a year. However a significant number of advertisers and agencies will be affected by the change and will need to adapt their strategies accordingly.
The SEO industry will welcome this move. It is widely considered that Yahoo produces highly relevant search results, often better than those returned by the other main search engines. Absorb’s brief in-house investigation using the BlindSearch tool backed this belief. However the paid nature of some listings has always cast doubt over these results. By freeing itself from the controversy of Paid Inclusion Yahoo will remove this doubt. Whether that leads to greater market-share remains to be seen.
Posted: October 19, 2009 @ 4:45 am
Google to allow Cross Domain Canonical Tag
by Stuart Morrison
Google announced at last week’s SMX East that they intend to all allow cross domain support for the canonical tag by the end of the year. This means that if you have more than one website you can tell Google that a page on one domain is actually a duplicate of a page on another site.
This change will no doubt be widely welcomed by webmasters and SEO professionals. Websites currently run the risk of being penalised for duplicate content. And because Google can never be certain which site originally produced the content (only that which it indexed first), the wrong site may be penalised. Using a cross domain canonical tag will help prevent this from happening.
Of particular interest to Absorb is the use of duplicate content in ‘white label’ sites. Retail and travel sites often provide content to ‘white label’ affiliates, who effectively plug-in content taken from the parent site. This use of duplicate content has an obvious risk of damage to rankings to the original site. By using a cross domain canonical tag, we would be able to remove this danger and preserve rankings.
A few commentators are pointing to possible downsides of the new tag. Some voices suggest it will be a means to hijack content. However if, as we hope, Google ensures strict rules, e.g. that all sites are verified in Webmaster Tools, such a scenario is unlikely.
Interestingly Bing and Yahoo have similarly shown interest in supporting the use of a canonical tag, but only within the same domain.
Posted: October 12, 2009 @ 11:14 pm
Tags: Affiliates, Commentators, Domain Support, Google, No Doubt, Risk, SEO, Smx, Strict Rules, Tag, Travel Site, Travel Sites, Voices, Webmaster Tools, White Label, Yahoo