Paid Inclusion Under Fire at Search Engine Shindig

Yahoos goal with its new paid inclusion program is to gather more content for its index, and the company maintains an "iron wall" between the paid service and its algorithmic relevancy rankings, said Tim Cadogan, Yahoos vice president of search.

"It has no relevance at all on the relevancy algorithm," he said.

Yahoo, of Sunnyvale, Calif., is trying to eliminate "the enormous guessing game" played by Web sites trying to make sure that search engines regularly crawl their pages, Cadogan said.

The debate over paid inclusion points to a larger problem plaguing search engines—the increase in spam-like results from sites using sometime unscrupulous methods for ranking high in specific searches, said Gerry Campbell, vice president and general manager of America Online Inc.s search and navigation efforts.

AOL does not operate its own search-engine crawler or index, instead partnering to use Googles Web results as well as its paid sponsored links. AOL, of Dulles, Va., signed a new deal with Google in October.

"The elephant in the room is that purely algorithmic results are subject to spam," he said. "We also have very real problems where some results are not good enough."

Campbell said search engines need to find a way to balance the concerns around paid inclusions and "objectively and transparently" increase relevancy, or they risk turning Web users away.

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