Remember just a few short years ago when Yahoo was eager for your submissions and encouraged you to add your URL to their directory? And just as soon as we all became accustomed to Yahoo editors nipping and tucking our carefully crafted descriptions, Yahoo began charging a "Business Express" submission fee - to cover the cost of their editing and to reduce submission times from eight weeks to seven days. Now, Yahoo has announced their intent to make the $299 submission fee an annual recurring charge instead of a one-time fee. Now, you must pay not just for editorial review, but for continued inclusion, year-after-year.

As this excerpt below taken from Yahoo's new submission page shows, Yahoo! has indeed put a "recurring annual fee" in place for any site submitted after December 28th 2001. What this means is that not only do you have to pay the $299 submission fee to get your listing into Yahoo!, but if you want to keep it in their directory, you have to pay $299 every year after that. If your site was included in Yahoo prior to December 28th, then these reoccurring fees are waived.

To quote from Yahoo "your payment only guarantees that Yahoo will consider and respond to your request within seven business days, by either accepting or not accepting your site. You expressly agree to pay to Yahoo such fee whether or not your site is accepted or denied inclusion in the Directory. If your web site is accepted for inclusion in the Directory as part of Yahoo Express on or after December 28, 2001, then your web site's continued inclusion in the Directory will be subject to additional review each year and you agree that your credit card will be charged the Recurring Annual Fee" (http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/terms.html).

Your Yahoo listing is now like your domain name purchase with an annual recurring cost. Note that for your annual fee you do not have the option of making annual changes to your listing. This annual fee is just for continuation in the directory at Yahoo's discretion. Be advised that if you choose to submit a change request using the Yahoo! Express, you will be immediately charged the current initial consideration fee, and the changes may or may not be made.

If you've kept up with the news, you know there's been a significant decline in online advertising revenues for Web-based companies. However, the awareness of the power of search engine listings as an effective advertising channel has grown in recent years. Therefore, the new fee structure arguably makes good business sense for Yahoo. Given the huge number of sites added to the directory each year, Yahoo will have established a substantial reoccurring revenue stream helping to ensure its economic health and continuance. Given the seismic shifts that are occurring in the search engine landscape (i.e., Excite's recent bankruptcy), this annual fee seems less onerous than some of the other models that are appearing.

Unfortunately, what may make financial sense for Yahoo is not equally good news for Webmasters trying to advertise new Web sites on a budget. Yahoo knows that the advertising exposure from a good listing on Yahoo is worth more than $299/year because of their huge traffic volume. That's why they're charging the annual fee. In reality, it has nothing to do with them being able to afford to "review" your site as they imply. The cost of the actual "review" does not come close to $299. However, the other overhead of running the site and attracting millions of visitors does cost some serious change.

Since the stakes have risen, it's all that much more important to get your Yahoo submission right the first time. There's many things you can do to stack the deck in your favor. Unfortunately, if you don't do it right, you can get stuck with a listing that ranks poorly. For tips on submitting to Yahoo (along with other major directories), see the Directory Submission Guide in the WebPosition Submitter.

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