Out of Office
Lisa will be out of the office starting February 28th, 2004 returning March 9th, 2004. She will be attending the Alabama State Bed and Breakfast Conference. Please contact Marian at 877-ACORN 99 in her absence.
Yahoo Changes
As of Friday February 20th, 2004 Yahoo is not longer taking their search engine data feeds from Google. They are now being fed by Inktomi. What does this mean to you? Well... after the Google algorithm re-writes back in November, both Google and Yahoo were producing results that mainly concentrated on listings and directories. Today, Yahoo listings look more like the old Google listings did before the November 16th changes. In fact, Google appears to have lessened it's criteria since last Friday. Competition does wonderful things!
Take a moment and go to http://www.yahoo.com and type in your search term for inns in your area.
Ex: Colorado Springs Bed Breakfast.
You will see 2 Types of listings in the "WEB RESULTS" (the white part of the page) below the Sponsored Results on the left.
Type 1: Being fed from the Yahoo Database (not from Inktomi) if you have paid the $299 or have been grand fathered in the Yahoo Database you will see a listing similar to Number 2 below - Eastholme in the Rockies. See where it says Eastholme's actual name, and isn't pulling their title from their site. Also notice where it has Category: Colorado>Cascade>Bed and Breakfasts? This is coming from the Yahoo Database, not Inktomi.
Type 2: Being fed directly from Inktomi - If you have paid to be included in the Inktomi Database (this is a yearly flat fee - not pay per click) then you'll see a listing simi liar to number 1 below - Victorias Keep. See where it has their actual title: Colorado Bed and Breakfast - Colorado Springs Bed & Breakfast Manitou, and doesn't say Category? This feed is coming from Inktomi.
TOP 20 WEB RESULTS out of about 151,000 ( What's this? )
- Colorado Bed and Breakfast - Colorado Springs Bed & Breakfast Manitou
... to a Colorado Bed and Breakfast - Manitou Springs Bed and Breakfast - Colorado Springs Lodging! ... Colorado Springs Lodging, a Colorado Springs Bed & Breakfast , a Colorado Springs B&B ...
www.victoriaskeep.com/ - 25k - Cached - More pages from this site
- Eastholme in the Rockies Bed and Breakfast
Rocky Mountain location for romantic bed and breakfast inn getaways, family reunions, vacations, and business retreats.
Category: Colorado > Cascade > Bed and Breakfasts
www.eastholme.com/ - 26k - Cached
What should you do?
First - Look and see where you are showing up in the new Yahoo. If you haven't paid to be included in the Inktomi directory listings, and you aren't getting placement from a Yahoo database listing, you may want to seriously consider paying to have Inktomi index your website.
But before you pay - you need to make sure your website is "Search Engine Friendly". Since Inktomi isn't a Pay Per Click (PPC) and its a Pay to be Included (PPIC), it will crawl (spider) your website. If you don't have good titles, descriptions, content, and decent reciprocal links - paying to be included won't put you very high on the Web Results list in Yahoo.
But if your site is "Search Engine Friendly" then we recommend purchasing the Inktomi indexing through a company called Position Tech http://www.positiontech.com They will list your site with not only Inktomi, but also the Fast and ASK databases for $104 a year. They also re-index your site every 36 hours to 1 week automatically, and provide good statistics to let you know how many clicks your listing is getting daily.
Have questions? Drop Lisa an email at lisa@acorn-is.com
