• by March 1, 2004

Yahoo! isn't wasting any time in rolling out services to augment its new search product. On Monday, the Internet giant introduced what it's calling a Content Acquisition Program (CAP), with the goal of providing commercial and non-commercial (government, education, and non-profit) customers with increasingly relevant and fresh search results.

"We were finding that a lot of content is inaccessible, and we wanted to be able to access the 'hidden' Web," says Chris Bolte, VP-strategic alliances, Overture, who is heading the effort for Yahoo! Search. Bolte says that many customers had to go around the search engine to get their content listed. The CAP program helps to resolve the situation by establishing guidelines by which content can be reviewed for quality and relevance, and refreshed.

"Our goal is to provide for the best, highest quality search experience possible," Bolte says. "The more we know, the better we can reflect that knowledge in the search results."

The program sets up direct relationships with content providers, and enables Yahoo!'s search engine to capture comprehensive documents like the ones found in non-profit institutions such as The New York Public Library, the National Science Digital Library, the Library of Congress, and others.

Yahoo! and Overture, which the Internet giant acquired last year, will work with CAP customers on a cost-per-click basis via Site Match (designed for smaller customers) and Site Match Xchange (designed for larger customers who submit 1,000 URLS or more). Site Match subscribers who submit less than 1,000 URLs pay an annual submission fee in which the cost for the first URL is $49; 2-10 URLs are $29 each; and 11-999 URLs are $10 apiece. Subscribers pay a fixed cost-per-click for each customer lead that clicks on their listing. For most content categories, the cost-per-click is $0.15, while select categories are $0.30 per click.

Bolte says that CAP should help media buyers and planners get better, cleaner results for their clients, and that it complements pay-for-performance search.