I decided to take a crack at Yahoo’s Overture PPC program today and stumbled across this page that talks about paid inclusion in Yahoo!’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Now this doesn’t seem like bribery at first, but…

After searching some more (actually just read through my subscriptions) I found a post that gave me the information I was looking for - SERoundTable was talking about a different aspect of Yahoo!’s paid search inclusion program.

Now Yahoo! doesn’t come out and say that they will re-include a website that was previously banned, but one member talks about his first-hand experience.

Originally he had his website banned from Yahoo! Search, and tried to get into their organic results by the regular inclusion, but they were refused. This user then decided to take a stab at the paid inclusion and Yahoo! took them back into their SERPs.

Now I’m not trying to say that this isn’t a good thing for that member, but this really diminishes Yahoo!’s credibility as a search engine if they are going to include websites (which their algorithm originaly banned) when they receive payment. This could mean two things:

• Either their algorithm has a flaw and bans good websites
• or they are willing to look the other way and manually include bad websites if they receive cash payment?

Nevertheless, either option is not a good representation for Yahoo!…

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