Jackie Jahosky's online lighting shop is just the kind of business Yahoo Inc. expected to help with its new search engine. Instead, the Internet giant has managed to rankle the Long Island entrepreneur, and plenty of others like her.
Yahoo this week rolled out a plan to keep its search engine up to date by charging commercial websites a fee to index them more frequently. The Sunnyvale, Calif., company said the approach, known as paid inclusion, would produce more accurate search engine results and boost its revenue.
Some webmasters and small-business owners are complaining bitterly. They say Yahoo has a financial incentive to boost paying customers in search results and they fear they'll be forced to pony up if they want to stay even with deep-pocketed competitors.
"It's going to be totally out of reach for me to pay for this program," said Jahosky, who runs Specialty-Lights.com out of her home in Ronkonkoma, N.Y.
To participate, she would have to pay Yahoo $49 a year, plus 30 cents each time someone reached her website through the search portal. When she told a Yahoo executive speaking at a search engine conference in New York, "I just don't like it," the audience responded with applause, according to attendees.
Yahoo insists the new program won't affect the integrity of its Internet search results. To the contrary, the company says its search engine will become more relevant because it will include more websites and update them more often.
"We wouldn't be going out and causing a rumpus if we didn't think this was creating a much better product," said Tim Cadogan, Yahoo's vice president of search. "All we're doing is presenting the most relevant results."
Paid inclusion is a cornerstone of Yahoo's strategy as it battles archrival Google Inc., the leading search provider, over how users navigate the Internet.
Analysts say Yahoo, which dumped Google's search technology last month in place of its own, is showing an unapologetic willingness to be known as a commercially oriented search engine. Meanwhile, Google is spinning itself as the keeper of a pure search engine untainted by advertising dollars.
Both Yahoo and Google sell clearly marked ads alongside regular search results. But Larry Page, co-founder and president of closely held Google, said users probably wouldn't realize that some websites may have bought their way into the index through paid inclusion. After all, he said, if it didn't boost a website's ranking, then why would a webmaster pay for it?
