Submitting Your Site to Yahoo

Yahoo charges $299 a year for all business sites ($600 for adult sites), but is considered by many to be worth it. Non-business and non-profit sites can still get listed for free. As with the OPD, people at Yahoo will review your site first. Since the process takes some time, focus on getting listed on Yahoo early on too.

Getting listed on Yahoo can be a bit of a challenge as they have exacting editorial standards. You want your site to be absolutely complete and ready before a Yahoo editor looks at it. Do not have any broken links and make sure your site displays correctly in Netscape 4.7 - this is the browser that Yahoo editors will use to review your site.

Also bear in mind your $299 is no guarantee that your site will be listed, it is merely the fee for having your site reviewed and considered for a listing.

Submitting your site properly to Yahoo could be the subject of another book and as such is beyond the scope of this guide.
Important: Because of the precise and exacting nature of how to submit your site correctly for review on Yahoo, you must follow the review submission guidelines on the Yahoo site precisely and to the letter. For more information on this, see Yahoo Express at

http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/busexpress.html

Heads Up: Sometime early in 2004, Google will no longer provide search results to Yahoo! Instead, Inktomi (which Yahoo bought) will provide search results instead. This means that you could potentially lose up to about 25% of your current Google traffic. As such, make sure you are in the Inktomi index. Although Inktomi's crawler may pick up your site naturally, there is no guarantee.

Currently, the best way to get in the Inktomi index is through a paid inclusion service such as offered by www.positiontech.com. Current cost for inclusion is $39 per URL per year. Your page(s) will be indexed within 48 hours. Pricing and details sure to change once Yahoo finally makes the switch.