Review: Excite's paid inclusion service

An adult webmaster article...

Written by Tom from Tom's Newbie Booster

Excite search engine: http://www.excite.com/
Paid inclusion service: https://secure.ah-ha.com/guaranteed_inclusion/teaser.aspx

Excite is a search engine - a little bit like Google except it's not as large. It can't search through as many pages as Google can and it's not capable of sending you as many visitors. But it's still what you might call an important search engine. Excite's been around for as long as I can remember - long before Google was even a twinkle in it's creator's eyes. Excite was one of the kings of the web - a giant. Unlike some of the 'old school' search engine giants, Excite is still with us in 2002 and is now offering a paid inclusion service.

Pay Per Inclusion (PPI)

PPI is where the search engines charge you a fee to add your website. Whereas adding your site to something like Google.com is a (free) process of submit, sit-and-wait-and-hope-for-the-best, this system guarantees that you will be included in the search engine. But don't start jumping for joy just yet because it's not all roses. PPI is just that - an inclusion into the search engine, and regular checks from the search engine to see if anything on your page has changed. It does not guarantee traffic.

The benefits of PPI are:

- Guaranteed inclusion
- No content sites and pages allowed
- Regular revisiting of the page (which allows you to fine - tune it).

Pricing up Excite...

Excite's pricing structure is one of the most interesting parts of it's PPI program:

1 Web Address $49.95
Up to 10 Addresses $99.95
Up to 50 Addresses $199.95
Up to 100 Addresses $249.95
Up to 500 Addresses $399.95

It's clear from this that it is NOT efficient to buy one URL. If you pay twice as much, you'll get TEN times as many URLs into the index. This is very important when it comes to paid inclusion. I found with Inktomi's PPI service that one URL didn't reveal many secrets. I needed at least ten before I could see a pattern in the structure of the pages as to what was working. So, if you're going to play with Excite, I'd definitely recommend splashing out on the 10 URL option or better.

Your pages will be included within 72 hours and revisited every 48 hours.

Another major plus with Excite is that it does not charge you extra because your site is of an adult nature. There is a box which you tick to say that this site contains adult content. Compared to the majority of other PPI programs out there, this is a breath of fresh air for adult webmasters.

False advertizing...

But don't think that Excite's PPI program is without faults. There are some serious flaws that anyone submitting here needs to know about.

1) If you take a look at this page - https://secure.ah-ha.com/guaranteed_inclusion/teaser.aspx you'll see some logos to the right of the screen for Webcrawler, Dogpile, and some other desirable search engines. If you thought that your site would automatically be included in those search engines - think again. At one of the final sign-up pages of the process, there's a little pre-checked box asking you if you'd like to pay to get into those SE's as well. It's at a 'discounted' rate of about half of your Excite fee. From the first page, it looks like these engines ARE one of the reasons that you should be trying to get into Excite but they have to be paid for separately.

2) The sign-up process is far from straight forward. It was unclear as to whether the URLs that could be included with each package had to be from the same address. The form kept asking for my 'sub-addresses', which I took to be addresses under the same domain name. And yet I WAS able to add in domain names as my 'sub addresses'. The other stumbling block was whether or not one could add additional URLs at a later date - or if by pressing submit with say 2 URLs listed, you wouldn't be able to add the other 8 later on.

After signing up, I'm still unsure as to whether URLs can be added later. If you use this service, add in X placeholders for your pages - you can change them later.

3) Results tracking is also charged at an extra fee of $9.95 per month. Inktomi and Altavista's PPI programs both offer some excellent tracking systems which are included in the price. You can also opt for an "express inclusion" which takes only 24 hours to get your pages indexed. At times during the sign-up process, I did feel like a second class citizen even though I was paying premium rate.

4) Spend too long inputting those URLs, and a message pops up saying "session timed out - please start again". Frustrating didn't cover it!

5) No way to batch input URLs - such as a text area box instead of a one-line form box. This got to be pretty frustrating as I opted for the 50 URLs. In fact, it was almost impossible to add in these URLs and I had to manually paste them in 3 times each before it went through. That's 150 URLs. This is a serious bug which should have been ironed out at the beta testing stage.

6) The help section is more of a "why you should advertize" than a helpful guide to HOW you sign up. And there's no real answers to any serious technical questions there. There is however an email address which will get you direct support.

After sign-up

After you've paid your dues via the online credit card form (which was very straight forward) you can then log in to the member's area and work with your excite listings. There's a LOT of irrelevant info in here, and I get the impression that this is a multi-purpose area which is designed for a number of different users (not just the excite PPI program). A custom-designed area would have been much more effective.

By clicking the "guaranteed inclusion" tab, you can then get access to the important info - your URLs. Clicking (list URLs) brings up a simple table where you can edit the URLs which are to be included in the index. It looks like you can completely change the URL that you've listed - which is GOOD news.

I have to say that I really liked this part of the Excite paid inclusion. After I'd found the area of the login zone which applied to me, I was able to quite easily alter anything I wasn't happy with. Graphics were minimal and the server seemed to run very smoothly. I've no complaints at all about this part of the process and it's easier to use than Altavista and Inktomi's user area and faster than Google's PPC pages.

Summing up

It's important to remember that this can only ever be half a review. The real meat of the experiment will be in whether the Excite program can deliver traffic - that's all I care about here! So far I have invested $300 and bought 50 URLs. That's $6 per URL for one year for inclusion in Excite AND the partner sites. It's hard not to have high expectations, but I have my doubts as to whether the system will yield any worthwhile results. There's also the problem with the adult filter page - where some phrases trigger an ad for excite and links off to other places. But I'll play with it and see what happens.

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Scores: Excite PPI
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Sign-up process: 5 / 10
If I had to input those 50 URLs one more time...

Value for money: 9 / 10
As far as paying your way into the search engines goes, $6 per URL is a bargain. But this will depend on whether or not Excite can deliver the traffic.

Member's area / editing your account: 7 / 10
Nothing pretty but a good URL editor with no stings.

Features: 5 / 10
[i]Some simple free stats would have been welcome here. Being charged $10 for stats after paying $300 to list your sites seems petty and somewhat mean.

Adult friendly: 8 / 10
The "Adult Content" box was a very welcome sight indeed.

Support: 6 / 10
The help section was thin and the FAQ didn't offer much beyond the basics. A clear email address was available however.

Total score: 7 / 10
Verdict: Watch this space. I'll let you know how I get on. As with all of the PPC / PPI systems I've tried so far Excite has potential but is let down slightly by some silly little mistakes which could easily have been fixed.

TOM ^"^