Yes, Yahoo has charged a mandatory listing fee for its commercial areas since November 2000. But that fee was relatively inexpensive, a one-off payment and initially created as an optional choice in February 1999 to help Yahoo deal with the criticism that it took too long for sites to get listed within it. The change to an annual fee reverses the situation with Yahoo's commercial listings, making them far more advertising in nature than editorial. As with yellow pages, if an advertiser refuses to pay the annual Yahoo listing fee, they will be dropped. That is not something that happens in an editorial scenario, where sites deemed to be important are retained, regardless of payments received.

It's important to note that the change only impacts the commercial areas of Yahoo, what it has been calling for the past several months the "Yahoo Commercial Directory." Non-commercial areas still have the $299 listing fee requirement, but it looks like it will only be a "one-time fee". Web sites -- even commercial sites with non-commercial content -- can submit to appropriate non-commercial categories and do indeed get accepted.

For site owners, paying the annual fee is still likely to be well worth the cost. Yahoo continues to deliver plenty of traffic to web sites. Being listed within it remains a must. Pay the submission fee, and if you don't feel you got the value out of it by the end of the year, then don't renew.

GOOD NEWS! ... The annual fee is only charged for sites submitted on or after December 28, 2001. If you got listed before this, congratulations! You've escaped the annual fee. Yahoo wouldn't say as much, but it is almost certain sites submitted before December 28 have escaped the annual fee for legal reasons. After all, when they signed up, the listing fee was essentially presented as a one time charge...WHEW!!