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Paid-for
search placement
Information World Review - Nov 02
Introduction | Submissions | Pay-for providers | Google | eSpotting | Overture | Privacy concerns Cash for questions True, but search engine promotion can be bewildering. Search sites contain both editorial and paid-for results. Editorial results can be from a computer-compiled index or a manually edited directory, whilst paid for results come in a variety of guises:
A multitude of distribution and supply partnerships also makes the search engine arena confusing for marketers. For example, MSN.co.uk receives its paid-for search results from Overture (acquired by Yahoo in July 2003 for US$1.6 billion), editorial results from Inktomi (also acquired by Yahoo in 2003, for US$235 million) and directory listings from BT LookSmart (separated from BT in December 2002 to form independent ad network LookSmart.com). Such a combination is typical of major portal sites. A major portal company can also use different paid-placement-providers in different geographies e.g. Yahoo! partners with Espotting in Europe (which merged with US company Findwhat.com in February 2004, and rebranded as MIVA in June 2005), but with Overture in the US. Search engine submissions There are a variety of relatively inexpensive website submission tools that can be used to submit your site to search sites, and boost your rankings within the free editorial results. These software tools can produce reports verifying that the search engine accepts each submission made and analyse the effectiveness of your web pages, giving advice on improving rankings for them. They can also track the number of visitors to your site, where they came from, and what keywords they used to find you. Examples of such products include SubmitNet, WebSeed, PositionPro or WebPosition Gold. Be careful to avoid any tool that may violate the policies of certain search engines with the improper use of doorway pages or the use of cloaking. Doorway pages are pages designed especially for search engines to do well for particular phrases. They in turn prompt visitors to click through to the page that actually contains the content. These pages are also called "bridge" or "jump" pages. Cloaking is the practice of sending search engines pages that are different from the ones human readers see. Be aware that submitting your site will not render any immediate change in your rankings as search engines and directories may take a few months to index newly submitted pages. back to the top Pay-for providers Today, paid-for-performance is a booming market. Kevin Kerrigan of BT LookSmart estimates that the UK paid search market alone could grow to be worth £500M a year. Paid search operators such as Espotting and Overture get paid when a site visitor clicks through to the advertisers' site. Revenues are then split with the search site distribution partners that publish these keyword sponsored ads with their editorial search results. They provide advertisers with sophisticated web-based purchasing, reporting and campaign optimisation tools (e.g. real-time keyword tracking and auction budget management). With such tools, advertisers are attracted to paid-for placements due to measurability, accountability and cost-effectiveness - campaigns can be carefully tracked and costs controlled. For example, bids can be managed in real-time. During the working week, companies will submit higher bids for their sponsored keywords during lunch time, but then drop their bids back down later in the afternoon. This is particularly true for travel, financial services and lifestyle (e.g. horoscopes) searches. Click through rate will depend on the search type - a brand name search would typically yield a much higher click-through rate that a search for a generic product. As there is no single dominant player in any particular market, any broad advertising campaign needs to use the services of all the major pay-for-performance providers. This can raise its own management difficulties, as each provider will have different editorial rules such as number of characters allowed in the title and description fields. Some providers count plurals as different keywords, some don't, whilst some permit characters with accents and some don't. Providers can also exert control via their editorial review of your keyword relevancy. Each of the main pay-for providers is profiled below: back to the top Google first began offering advertisers positions on its site in January 2000 with its Google AdWords product. Company claims to have been profitable for the last 21 months. It opened its first non-US office in the UK in Sept 2001 and now has offices in France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Canada. In August it signed Lloyds TSB bank for year long sponsored links deal worth over £1M. Lloyds TSB have sponsored 1,000 insurance related search terms, to ensure prominent placement for its online insurance brands insurance.co.uk and screentrade.co.uk to UK Google searchers (users' geographical location is identified through IP sensing). Other big-name UK advertising clients include BT, British Airways, British Gas, Ford, Expedia, Comet and Virgin. It will monitor companies acquiring rivals' brand names for their own campaigns, but, according to Omid Kordestani, senior vice president of sales at Google, they would only actually remove the ads of a company sponsoring such keywords if they injured party actually filed a complaint. Google has announced it is seeking to syndicate its AdWords product to partner sites such as major portals outside of the US. The company powers editorial search results at the following UK sites: Yahoo!, AOL, Freeserve, BBC and BT Openworld. Espotting Media Like arch-rival Overture, the company serves its clients ads via a distribution network of search engines and major portals such as ISP sites. It provides paid-for search results at Yahoo! Europe, Lycos Europe, AltaVista France, Spain and Italy, HotBot France, Ask Jeeves, Tiscali France, BT LookSmart, Netscape, UK Plus, ntl:home and easyInternet. Revenues are shared between the company and its distribution partners - its recent two-year deal with Lycos Europe will be worth 17.5M euros The company also has offices in Germany, France, Italy and Spain and recently appointed Anne Lakstigala, former European Head of Business Development at AltaVista, as its European Business Development Director. (eSpotting Media merged with US company Findwhat.com in February 2004, and rebranded as MIVA in June 2005) back to the top Overture It opened first non-US office opened in the UK in November 2000, followed by new offices in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and France during 2002. The company recently announced plans to open an office in Tokyo first quarter 2003. (Overture was acquired by Yahoo in July 2003 for US$1.6 billion and is now fully integrated to Yahoo). Terra Lycos partnered with FindWhat.com, in August launched Lycos InSite AdBuyer, a direct competitor to Overture, Espotting and Google Adwords, offering an integrated platform of both paid inclusion and keyword advertising services on the Lycos and HotBot search sites. BT LookSmart acquired search engine WiseNut and later launched its Bidsmart featured listings product in mid-June. Although it has high-profile advertisers such as Barclaycard, it had only 70 advertisers at launch - way behind rivals Espotting and Overture. Allows non-profit and research organisations to sign up for consideration to be included in their directory for free at a special site www.zeal.com. (BT Looksmart separated from BT in December 2002 to form independent ad network LookSmart.com)
Table showing sample distribution partners of paid-placement providers.
Privacy concerns Related research paper: Search engine marketing - Section four - Pay-for performance
Information World Review is Europe's leading information industry publication. This article is reprinted in its entirety with permission from Learned Information Europe Ltd. All material copyright Learned Information Europe Ltd. |
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