VeriSign, Inktomi Debut Listing Service for Web Site Owners

Angling to put a fresh spin on domain name submission services, VeriSign Inc.
Thursday and Inktomi Corp. joined forces to roll out a listing service that allows site owners to showcase their pages on Inktomi’s popular search index.

Created to help entrepreneurs establish a highly-visible Web presence, the
cost of the first URL submission to Inktomi’s Search/Submit service is $30
for a full year, with each new one available at $15 a pop. In an interesting
twist, registrants don’t have to be clients of VeriSign; they may have
acquired their domain name from (gasp!) rival Register.com.

The Inktomi Search/Submit service differs from other free and
paid submission services by including URLs within 48 hours and re-indexing
clients’ data every 48 hours to ensure up-to-date search results. The
package also includes an account management tool for customers to confirm
inclusion of listings and to update URLs if they change after subscribing to
the service.

Subscribers can submit up to 100 URLs per order for initial and continued
inclusion of their URL in the Inktomi index. Each listing is automatically
added and updated in all search sites powered by the Inktomi index for one
year.

Doug Wolford, senior vice president and general manager of Web Presence
Services at VeriSign, said in a company statement the idea of the service
was to help online entrepreneurs become ubiquitous on leading sites such as
AOL and MSN.

Search/Submit is now available through VeriSign’s Network Solutions domain
name registration service and through Inktomi’s portal partners.

VeriSign’s co-launch of Inktomi’s listing service came a day after it rolled out wireless payment platform services, part of a larger scheme to pair the
domain name market with wireless users.

Next to its domain name business, which came vis-&#225-vis its swallowing of
Network Solutions Inc. last spring, VeriSign also specializes in digital
certificates. Along with Wednesday’s conversion of its Payflow Pro software
to wireless configurations, the infrastructure firm agreed to embed its
digital certificate technology into Ericsson’s WAP-enabled mobile phones as
well as NTT DoCoMo’s Java-ready 503i series phones.