The mixed message of paid inclusion

[hassen1]

There is an advantage to having paid programs that allow site owners to expedite controlled entry into a search engine's database. For instance, getting the home page of a new site listed right away can benefit search engines, search engine users and site owners. Similarly, having the ability to feed search engines content they might typically be unable to access can also be helpful to all.

Unfortunately, paid inclusion can be a difficult concept for search engines to "sell" to site owners, especially for the crawler-based search engines. After all, aren't they supposed to be picking up pages across the web naturally? Why should a site owner pay to make this happen? You should do it, say the search engines on their pages about paid inclusion, because we don't get all the pages, we don't index them quickly, and we don't refresh them on a regular basis.

Such a message might convince site owners that they'd better sign-up for the various paid inclusion programs, but it also works against a completely different message that the search engines want potential portal partners and the general public to believe, that they have fresh, relevant and comprehensive listings of what's on the web.

Let's take a tour of what the crawler-based search engines are saying, to see the mixed message that paid inclusion is producing, starting with the pioneer of paid inclusion, Inktomi.

[humpty]

errr??? so where's the discussion on Inktomi?