Selling space on Search Engines

[simonm]

I get regular calls from portal sites, marketing companies and the like, also calls selling such as keywords, key names etc.

The most recent was guaranteed placement on the 1st page of the MSN and Yahoo search listings. The salesman stated that this was in arrangement with both MSN and Yahoo!!!! I said that I doubted that was the case but perhaps he might convince me.

An example was 'london removals' he stated that the 7th entry was there due to a paid arrangement with his company and MSN.

As an aside we spoke about MSN keynames - remember them from a couple of years ago? I said that I thought it was a waste of money, he agreed but said that he had made commission of about £45,000 through selling keynames so wasn't that concerned!

We then went on to what he proposed to sell me, that being page one on Yahoo for 'block paving'. I must admit I hadn't checked recently, but was reassured when on both of us checking, my site was number one.. end of sale!

This leads me to a question. Does msn or Yahoo sell page one positioning on search results through 3rd parties? Clearly they used to sell keynames and they sell sponsored links.

Looking at the sample site 'The London removal Company' www . london - removal . com, the SEO is not that great and there are no inbound links! The only way it could realistically be listed was through some form of paid inclusion or serious good luck!

[awall19]

yahoo does list overture listings atop its search results. their click price is a minimum bid of 10 cents each. also that keyword you named would be really really easy to get in the regular results anyway.

[Mel]

You can submit sites to Yahoo through a trusted feed, and I would imagine that it would be easy enough for a company selling "guaranteed first page listings" to sell listings in this way.

[americana]

Hi Simonm:

I too received a very similar call. Just like you, my first reaction was that they were trying to pull the wool over my eyes - that they were hoping to get a marketing person who didn't know anything about SEO or internet marketing... anyway, they gave me a similar example as the one they gave you, which made me think that it might be true.

You'd think that he'd try to sell placement for 'block paving' to a company that came up lower in the results than you. If what he said is true, he could sell a position for that word and bump you out of your spot...

...Say you are on the bottom of page one for a specific word and a 3rd party company like this one sells that word to someone - that could bump you to page two... no good.

Good post (question). I'd like to get an answer for this one too.