With all these changes surrounding Yahoo and the new Overture Site Match system, where do you stand to get the best bang for you buck as a small business?
First a quick glance at the new Site Match system. It is based on a combination of cost-per-click and paid inclusion. For $49 you can submit the first page to Site Match, for subsequent pages the cost is reduced. This will include your site within a network of engines such as Yahoo, AltaVista, AlltheWeb, Overture, all engines in the FAST network and others. But there is a catch. You will also be charged a $50 minimum deposit to go towards the new 15 to 30 cents per click charges that your listing will accumulate, and you are limited to having only the submitted pages indexed. So basically just to have your site included in the index you are looking at 49 dollars a year plus 15 to 30 cents per click, and are not guaranteed any placements what so ever.
For big companies with high advertising budgets, this may not seem so bad. But what about the little ma and pa shops? With Overture Content Match you can get nearly the same distribution, for less money and rank number one! Well, this isn’t entirely true, but for many smaller online companies who are positioned in a less competitive market this is an angle to look at.
If you are bidding on a keyword phrase that has little competition, there is a good chance that you can pay less per click for your traffic and avoid the $49 annual fee. If ‘blue widget’ is going for 12 cents a click for number one in Overture, you can have your site listed across the network for 3 cents less per click than with Site Match.