OVERTURE SITE MATCH™ CONTENT GUIDELINES
March 1, 2004

Overture's Site Match program strives to provide the best search experience on the Web by directing searchers to high-quality and relevant Web content in response to a search query.
Pages Overture Wants Included in Its Site Match Index:

· Original and unique content of genuine value
· Pages designed primarily for humans, with search engine considerations secondary
· Hyperlinks intended to help people find interesting, related content, when applicable
· Metadata (including title and description) that accurately describes the contents of a Web page
· Good Web design in general
Unfortunately, not all Web pages contain information that is valuable to a user. Some pages are created deliberately to trick the search engine into offering inappropriate, redundant or poor-quality search results; this is often called "spam." Overture does not want these pages in the index.
Pages Overture Does not Want Included in Its Site Match Index:
Some, but not all, examples of the more common types of pages that Overture does not want included:
· Pages that harm accuracy, diversity or relevance of search results
· Pages dedicated to directing the user to another page ("doorway pages")
· Pages that have substantially the same content as other pages
· Sites with numerous, unnecessary virtual hostnames
· Pages in great quantity, automatically generated, with minimal content or of little value
· Pages using methods to artificially inflate search engine ranking
· Pages with text that is not easily read, e.g., text that is too small or is obscured by the background of the page
· Cloaking or stealth; a technique used by some web sites to deliver one page to a search engine and a different page to all other users
· Excessively cross-linking to inflate a site's apparent popularity
· Pages built primarily for search engines or pages with excessive or off-topic keywords
· Misuse or inaccurate use of competitor or brand names
· Duplication of content, either by submission of multiple pages with same content, submitting the same content from multiple domains, or submitting the same content from multiple hosts
· Pages that use excessive pop-ups, interfering with user navigation
· Pages that seem deceptive, fraudulent or provide a poor user experience (Descriptions that are not relevant to the page content)
· Pages that result in a 404 error
· Content, domains, titles, metadata or descriptions that (i) violate any applicable law or regulation; (ii) infringes in any manner any copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret or other intellectual property right of any party; (iii) breach any duty toward or rights of any person or entity including, without limitation, rights of publicity or privacy, or have otherwise resulted in any consumer fraud, product liability, tort, breach of contract, injury, damage or harm of any kind to any person or entity; (iv) are false or misleading; and/or (v) are defamatory, libelous, slanderous or threatening.
Overture's Site Match Guidelines
Overture's Site Match program policies are designed to ensure that poor-quality pages do not degrade the user experience in any way. As with Overture's other guidelines, Overture reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to take any and all action it deems appropriate to insure the quality of its index.
Treatment of Paid Content
Overture designed its Site Match programs to improve the quality of its search databases and thereby enhance the search user experience. Therefore, URLs submitted via such programs are subject to these rules and any other additional rules or policies adopted by Overture from time to time.