Huge news: According to CBS Marketwatch, Ask Jeeves has said that it will no longer guarantee inclusion for web sites that pay to be included in its search engine results. In my opinion, Google has proven that paid inclusion is evil, or at least really stupid. Search engines should index all worthy sites and not just commercial ones that pay. I don’t think Google will ever resort to paid inclusion. I think their recent move from 3 to 4 billion pages indexed, and their clear mission to index all content everywhere, will eventually force both Yahoo and MSN to index more and more websites themselves and to drop paid inclusion, or at least make it less important.
I’m hoping this Ask Jeeves admission that paid inclusion leads to less relevant search results will force other major players to follow suit. I wish there were an “arms race” to see who could beat Google to 10 billion web pages. I think that would benefit all internet users worldwide.
