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Case Study: Is Lycos InSite Pro Paid Inclusion Worth It?

Last Update: Sunday, March 06, 2005.

In this article I will show you the results of my test with the Lycos InSite Pro paid inclusion site submission program.

I recently tested the Lycos InSite Pro paid inclusion system. InSite Pro offers guaranteed inclusion in the Lycos web index within 48 hours of submission, and full refresh of my web pages every 48 hours.

Lycos InSite Pro offers two packages:

* 1-250 Pages: $189.00/month

* 251-500 Pages: $279.00/month

I opted for the $279/month plan. I have about 500 pages of content across my network of sites and wanted all of them indexed in Lycos.

The Results

Lycos currently do not provide keyword, impression or click-through stats, although they do intend to offer them in the near future.

So I checked my traffic stats according to my WebTrendsLive reports. I was shocked to find that Lycos only sent 41 visitors in the first 2 weeks of indexing my site. During the same period, Google sent me thousands of visitors.

So I wrote to Lycos and asked if they could provide access to click through stats for my account. I wanted to double check, just in case my stats were wrong. They couldn't.

So I also asked what I could change in my pages to get more traffic.

Here's their helpful reply:

Every entry in the Lycos index is created by automated software called a "spider." When a Web page is submitted to Lycos, the spider examines the full text of the page and determines relevant keywords based on its composition.

The spider will pay close attention to the components of the URL, the TITLE tag, headings and subheadings, frequency of word use, location of words on the Web page, and the distance between words.

If your Web page contains frames, our spider will be able to index the text in the <NOFRAMES> section only. We cannot examine the pages within your frame.

Once our software has extracted this information, an abstract is created and stored in the Lycos index. Our search software ranks the search results by considering a combination of the factors listed above. Web pages with fewer than 100 words of text are less likely to be found in a Lycos search.

Read that again in case you missed anything.

Note that the Lycos spider pays close attention to the URL. So if you ever wondered if search engines took into account keywords in URLs, you now know the truth.

Another important point is that your pages should contain 100 words or more, otherwise it's unlikely to be found in Lycos.

For some unknown reason Lycos doesn't like my web pages.

There's nothing new in their reply that suggests I have not optimized my web pages in the correct manner to achieve top rankings in Lycos.

Thankfully, Google does like my pages, so I don't intend to change my pages just to cater to the Lycos ranking algorithm.

In case you're wondering, I have canceled my Lycos InSite Pro subscription. But that shouldn't come as a surprise. ;o)

Why You MUST Have A 'My Yahoo!' Page

By Graham Jones Platinum Quality Author

Article Word Count: 850 [View Summary] Comments (0)

Yahoo! allows you to set up your own front page called 'My Yahoo!'. Even if you don't use Yahoo! as your search engine, you need a My Yahoo! page which you log onto every day. That's because having a My Yahoo! page that is set up correctly can do wonders for your search engine ranking.

My Yahoo! is a page which you can set up with your own features so that all the material you want is presented to you in a convenient format. You can have news, weather, your diary, your contact list, your share portfolio and a host of other bits and pieces of content. A nice, handy home page for you.

However, a My Yahoo! page can also include something called an RSS Feed. This is a technique called 'Really Simple Syndication' and it allows owners of web sites to push their content to viewers, without them having to go collect it by visiting their web site. It can be set up for any page, but is usually reserved for blogs. If you use blogging software or a system such as Blogger you can simply set up an RSS or XML 'feed' for your page. (XML - eXtended Markup Language - is another system for syndicating content.) People who want to keep up to date with your news can include your RSS feed in their list of interesting web sites and every time your page is updated, their information is updated as well. Hence you can deliver new information to people who might otherwise forget to revisit your site.

You can include RSS feeds within your My Yahoo! to help you keep up to date with news you want to receive. But there is an added advantage. Yahoo! itself monitors all the My Yahoo! web pages that are created and indexes their content. This means if your own web site's RSS feed is listed in your My Yahoo! page you get automatic indexing of your web site. If you were to submit your site to Yahoo! you would either have to wait several weeks, or pay a fee to be considered for indexing. With a My Yahoo! page RSS feed, your pages will be indexed within hours.

So, here's the process you need to follow. Firstly, set up a My Yahoo! page. All you need to do is visit Yahoo! and click on the My Yahoo! logo at the top right of the page.

Then set up your account and choose the kind of layout you want and the features you would like to include. If you are not going to use the My Yahoo! page you create as your main home page, don't worry too much about this. The main purpose is to get your own web site indexed, so the design of your page is not important.

Now you want to add your RSS/XML feed. Click on the 'Choose Content' button at the bottom of your My Yahoo! page. Look at the 'Wide Modules' list and you'll see 'RSS Headlines (BETA)' down at the bottom of the list. Don't worry that it is in 'beta' stage - Yahoo! has been using it for well over a year. Select the option and click 'Finished'. You will then have the option to choose your RSS feeds.

On the 'Choose your RSS sources' page simply type in the complete URL (web site address) of your feed. One of mine, for instance, is 'http://www.infoselling.com/blog/atom.xml'. Your RSS feed will either be an 'rss' page or an 'xml' page. If you use Blogger and you haven't set up such a feed, you can do so by visiting the 'Settings' page.

Click on the 'Search' button and Yahoo! goes off to find your feed. If it finds it successfully you can simply add the selected feed to your page. Click on 'Finished' and you'll be back on your My Yahoo! page. That's it. Whenever you update your blog your My Yahoo! page gets updated - assuming you log into regularly. You can get your My Yahoo! page updated automatically if you submit your blog at Ping-o-Matic.

One other thing - make sure your RSS feed page includes a 'sitemap' - a link to a page which includes links to all the pages in your web site. Yahoo! will follow this sitemap link and start looking at all your other pages.

Having a My Yahoo! page is a quick and easy way to get your site indexed within Yahoo!. I tested it with one of my sites. I set up an RSS feed, loaded onto My Yahoo!'s RSS feeds and within three days all 287 pages of the web site had been indexed. With another site, I submitted it to the 'Submit your site' option at Yahoo! and several weeks later, still none of those pages have been listed by Yahoo! There is a clear reason to be using RSS feeds and having a My Yahoo! page.

Graham Jones is a psychologist who has specialized in the way we use the Internet. He is an expert on information products and runs Infoselling.com where you can get a FREE report on how to sell your own infoproducts.

http://www.infoselling.com

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