SiteMatch Revisited

The good folks from Yahoo have jumped into the debate regarding their new programs. Following up on my earlier comments, I thought it would be fair to include some positive thoughts based on their feedback.

First, they do a much better job now describing who benefits from SiteMatch and the conditions that would suggest using the program, and even more important have added an explicit description of attributes for a site that probably doesn't need the program. This type of clear and realistic information can directly induce customer to not spend money, and is therefore rarely dispensed. I think many people will be able to read this official 'Don't by it if.." list and save their money. Bravo Yahoo!

Second, I'm impressed with the level of customer service and communication that they seem to be promising. I hope they deliver, as they suggest, to the level where people feel like they get full and reasonable answers to all related questions. This level of support clearly has a cost to them, and a value to customers. Even more impressive, is that they seem to be promising better dispute resolution even for non-paying sites - via an email address they set up where sites that have been 'banned' can plead their case or request further info. I think they owe sites this basic courtesy (because the sites make up their index in the first place) but clearly many engines don't even do that.

Third, it's great that they've jumped in to discuss the issues. Most companies avoid these types of debates for all kinds of reasons. The web is making that harder, especially for web companies, but it still merits recognition when a big company breaks rank with the 'old way of doing things'. Defending anything in a forum is tough work, and they earn my esteem as long as they show up and make an honest attempt to communicate. It will be interesting to see how the thread pans out.

My primary objection to the SiteMatch program hasn't gone away - I think the flat fee $0.15 and $0.30 per click fees are unreasonable. A PPC listing system disincentives all kinds of excellent content that is not transactional in nature. Ideas for how to improve this would take more space and time than I want to spend, but at a minimum there should be more granularity to the pricing, and there should be fee caps (say $1000 annually per listing).

This isn't to say that the program doesn't have benefits, it's that the benefits aren't related to the number of clickthroughs. The responses Yahoo makes to these points are underwhelming:

• "The new base fee is lower than the old base fees." All that matters is the total cost. It only takes about 1000 clicks in a year to make the new programs meet the old prices. A site with 100,000 or even 1,000,000 clicks will take little comfort in the fact that their initial check is only $49.
• "Cost per click pricing ensures a higher level of user experience because only high quality pages will be submitted." This is true only if you define 'high quality page' as one that can earn in excess of $0.15 or $0.30. In fact, this policy prices many high-quality (defined as useful or informative) pages out of Yahoo (unless the free crawl finds them).
• "Unless CPC is instituted, there is no incentive not to create lots of bogus pages and 'game the system'." This is the worst argument of all. People 'game the system' because it is profitable. Adding a cost where there was none will certainly be a filter, but that filter applies equally to people and pages that aren't 'gaming the system' but just want to communicate or distribute information.

Welcome to the discussion Yahoo! Glad you're here.

Posted by Craig Danuloff at March 17, 2004 10:07 AM