When goal is to index entire web and results are far less relevant and traffic less likely to result in sales to listed sites, how do you charge sites to be listed? Hmmmm. The search engines said, "We've been getting complaints about a couple of things from sites seeking listings, one that they submit and never get listed, and two that when they are listed it is only months later that they begin to benefit from delivered search engine traffic." AHA! An opportunity presents itself to charge money to someone for listings!

Bingo! Paid inclusion is launched at Inktomi and becomes an instant success with those who have been frustrated by slow listing times and especially with those that can't seem to be listed at all at important engines. Here is a way to get listed and get listed sooner, I'll pay for that! But how much? And are there any benefits above free submission to entice reluctant web business into paying for what, until now has been free. We'll guarantee, not only that you'll be listed, but quickly, and to sweeten pot, we'll recrawl your site on a weekly basis to guarantee fresh listings.

Now it's time for everyone to leap into new model and begin more frequent crawls for preferred listees. Certainly this will lead even further toward commercialization of web, which angers many but is only solution to supporting increasingly expensive proposistion of providing complex search to millions and indexing a dramatically larger web.

Time to innovate if you expect to attract those paid inclusion listings. At Fast AllTheWeb, they've come up with an intra- search facility that site owners with under a specified number of pages can install as a branded, hosted search for their own sites as an additional benefit. A hosted and branded site search will likely cost them very little more to implement for paid inclusion customers, while increasing revenue for Fast. As Fast is a partner to Lycos network, this paid inclusion not only comes with intrasearch for your site and regular site recrawls to keep search results fresh, but also gets listings into Lycos network as well.

A further enhancement in race to paid inclusion will be extra cost "partner" or "sponsor" links that turn up at top of search results pages. This may affect some search partners differently than others as some now use GoTo paid listings as those "sponsor or partner" links. Certainly GoTo will fight to maintain current partners by making themselves more attractive to those search engines considering paid inclusion programs.

Inktomi has larger partner list to support their version of paid inclusion and is more attractive for distribution and visibility, but offers little in way of "perks" for value driven crowd. Altavista offers their own version of paid inclusion, dividing program into two separate categories, one for small businesses and sites under 500 pages and other for big boys of ebusiness with more than 500 pages to index.

Pricing is just now being determined by many search engines making paid inclusion move, but it ranges anywhere from $39 per page to be listed up to yearly pricing models which come with additional benefits, such as intra-search option from Fast, AllTheWeb.com.

I recommend keeping an eye out for short term sign-up bonuses and perks as paid inclusion model gains acceptance over next 6 months. Just as pay-per-click model of search took some time to gain traction, so too will paid inclusion.

Watch also for partnering changes in near term as larger networks battle to gain or maintain market share. Some will be more agressive than others so bargains and benefits will no doubt emerge within 6 to 8 months to build customer and brand loyalty early in race to paid inclusion dominance.

The plus-side of all these pricing options is that they are onetime fees (except for "LookListings" program). Once you pay your money then you aren't obligated to spend any more. So chances are, you are going to get your money's worth over long haul. Additionally, being listed in a LookSmart category is probably going to help your popularity in eyes of other search engines.

However, there are times where you might not see much value. There are certain categories that have very long lists of alphabetically organized sites. If you are a metals part maker, for example, and name of your company begins with "W" you are going to be buried in 6 pages of alphabetically organized pages. You can see exactly what I mean here: http://www.looksmart.com/eus1/eus317829/eus317864/eus77825/eus266177/e us298950/r?l& Chances are, your site is not going to be found too often amidst all of other sites.

In world of marketing, $299 is not a lot of money - especially for sweeping presence LookSmart provides and fact that once you are in directory you are in for good. Also, in this new Internet economy we are likely to see more price increases as companies scramble to find viable business models. 9 out of 10 times LookSmart is going to be a wise investment. My recommendation is to do a bit of research to see where you are likely going to be listed. If your category defines your company well and you will get a decent positioning in that category based on where your company name will fall alphabetically then LookSmart is probably going to give you a nice traffic boost.

Sage Lewis, founder and president of the web promotion firm SageRock.com. He has been employed as an Internet Strategist and design/promotion consultant for 5 years. To subscribe to SageRock's marketing newsletter, send a blank message to sagerock- subscribe@egroups.com or visit the company's site at www.sagerock.com.