Pay-for-Performance
This simply links to pay-per-click advertising options at Overture. Yahoo owns Overture, so this makes sense. For those unfamiliar with Overture.com, you bid for top rankings and the highest bidder receives the highest ranking. The advantage to this model is that you only spend as much as you feel the listing is worth and it's fairly quick and easy to do. There's no need to optimize your page's content so long as the page is relevant to the keywords you are bidding on.
The disadvantage to Overture is that you pay for every visitor you receive which may not be cost effective for all businesses and keyword categories. In addition, these listings only appear on Overture.com, and the Sponsored Results section of Yahoo and its partner sites. Most consumers view these listings as advertisements, which is after all what they are. Therefore, consumers will often skip over these listings in favor of the "real" search results displayed just below them. If they do click on a sponsored listing, they may proceed with a little more skepticism or caution compared to results that were ranked based on merit.
Site Match
( Editor's Note: See also: Yahoo Site Match - Is Site Match Right For Your Web Site? )
Inktomi's paid inclusion program has been replaced by Site Match and for larger customers, Site Match Xchange. These services guarantee your inclusion and a refresh of your page every 48 hours. This means that Yahoo's search engine "spider" will revisit your page every 48 hours and add your latest content to its index. This can be useful if you have content that changes often, or you want to quickly test various page designs to see what will rank best.
I noticed that when I visited their submission page, they advertised a 24-hour refresh. On all other pages I saw, they still say 48 hours. Therefore, they may be planning to move soon to a refresh every 24 hours. For now, I'd assume it could take up to 48 hours until Yahoo corrects the inconsistent wording.
With Site Match, you'll pay a $49 review fee where they will check your page for spam before guaranteeing its inclusion. The review fee decreases per URL based on the number of pages you submit.
Unlike Inktomi, Yahoo now charges new paid inclusion customers 15 cents a click, and for some keywords, you may pay 30 cents or more for the traffic that you actually receive from the listing. If you are an existing Inktomi paid inclusion customer, you will not be required to pay by the click until you renew your listing.
Similar to LookSmart's policy, Site Match is not guaranteeing you a top ranking, nor are they promising you'll receive a single visitor after paying the review fee. It's still up to you to create a search engine friendly page that will be relevant and rise to the top.
Word of caution: Be careful not to submit any pages that could be viewed as spam to Site Match. They claim to have a human-being review every one of these pages for content quality and for spam. They'll also crosscheck that review with various automated checks.
Therefore, Site Match pages will fall under greater scrutiny than free submission pages. Arguably, they probably cannot afford a human appraisal of every change you might make after a live person initially reviews the page. Therefore, the greatest scrutiny will likely occur within the first few weeks of submission.
Your best strategy is to know the rules for what may be classified as spam, and play within those rules both in the short and long run. WebPosition Gold's Page Critic will keep you updated about what each engine views as spam, and for what they are looking for in a top ranking page.
