Yahoo! Search Submit Pro recently added (99% sure this is recent because I haven’t seen this before) a ’site link’ functionality that looks very similar to business.com’s paid links and, of course, there was probably some influence from Google’s first result site links - I wouldn’t be surprised if Yahoo! got the bright idea to add more links to more sponsored ‘organic’ results from Business.com because business.com’s paid directory listings have been fed into Yahoo!’s organic results for quite some time now.

Click this screen shot to see the details:

Special note: Every single link above the fold for the query ‘loans’ in Yahoo! is paid! Wow!

Check out what a normal business.com listing looks like:

Eerily similar, right? Business.com’s directory feed has been picked up by Yahoo! and stuffed into the organic results for quite some time now…or business.com has been using ’search submit pro’ for their directory feeds…I can’t confirm anything, just speculating here but I can say for certain that business.com directory listings appear in Yahoo! organic search results…so I wonder if Yahoo! picks up these extra links now as part of the package or does business.com submit them via ’search submit pro’ as part of their package?

Yahoo!’s Search Submit Pro is a program where you can get ‘organic’ results that are really ‘paid’ if you can spend $5K+ per month. The application process is quite rigorous because the quality level of the pages you want in the ‘organic’ area have to be extremely high - or so they say. These ’sponsored’ results are easy to spot as a paid search marketer or SEO but the general user probably does not or would not know the difference. You can spot these results by simply rubbing your mouse over the link and looking at what the status bar says at the bottom of your browser.

You might be surprised at how much those ‘organic’ listings could cost - they are profitable for business.com because they cost less than business.com does. I can say that I know from current experience that the top organic result for some insanely competitive keywords only costs .75 to $2 per click while the sponsored ‘non-search submit pro’ side of advertising would cost $5+/click for the number 1 spot.

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