Date: | Fri, 3 Nov 2000 20:18:42 -0600 |
Subject: | SE Report #48, Part 1 of 2 |
To: | "search-engine-report-text" <search-engine-report-text@list5.internet.com> |
From: | "jmedley" <jmedley@internet.com> | Block address |
Reply-to: | "search-engine-report-text" <search-engine-report-text@list5.internet.com> |
|
|
THE SEARCH ENGINE REPORT
November 3, 2000 - Number 48 - Part 1 of 2
By Danny Sullivan
Editor, Search Engine Watch
http://searchenginewatch.com/
Copyright (c) 2000 internet.com corporation
_________________________Sponsors__________________________
This newsletter sponsored by: Atomz, Coastalsites.com and Search123
___________________________________________________________
===================
About The Report
===================
The Search Engine Report is a monthly newsletter that covers
developments
with search engines and changes to the Search Engine Watch web site,
http://searchenginewatch.com/.
The report has 153,000 subscribers. You may pass this newsletter on to
others, as long either part is sent in its entirety.
Did you know that there's a longer, more in-depth version of this
newsletter? The twice-monthly "Search Engine Update" newsletter is
just one of the many benefits available to Search Engine Watch "site
subscribers." Learn more about the advantages
to becoming a site subscriber at this page:
http://searchenginewatch.com/about/subscribe.html?source=ser0011
Please note that long URLs may break into two lines in some mail
readers.
Cut and paste, should this occur.
===================
In Part 1
+ Site News
+ Conference News
+ Paid Inclusion At Search Engines Gains Ground
+ Inktomi Debuts Self-Serve Paid Inclusion
-- (full story online, summary and link provided)
+ Submitting For Free
-- (full story online, summary and link provided)
+ List Info (Subscribing/Unsubscribing)
===================
Site News
===================
Hello Everyone--
This issue is heavy on stories about paid listings and paid inclusion
in
search engines. I apologize for that, but it's a sign of how rapidly
the
search engine landscape is changing. Whether you operate a web site or
simply want to search the web better, you'll need to be aware of the
revolutionary business moves that are taking place. I hope these
articles
will help keep you informed.
Along these lines, the Pay For Placement page in the site has received
a
major update. It's always had articles pertaining to the issue of
selling
search engine results, but now there's a chart (how I love charts!)
that
summarizes major non-banner advertising programs that are in place at
various services.
The Media Metrix Search Engine Ratings page has been updated, and a new
MMXI Europe Search Engine Ratings shows ratings for European search
engines. Both of these pages will get yet a further update shortly,
after I
catch my breath from the newsletter :)
All the pages I've mentioned can be found via the What's New Page,
below.
Also, my thanks to all those who sent condolences about my grandmother
--
they were appreciated.
What's New
http://searchenginewatch.com/whatsnew.html
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====================
Conference News
====================
The Search Engine Strategies conference is next week! It will be in
Dallas,
on November 9. I'll be presenting and moderating sessions at the
conference
that features experts on search engine marketing issues and panelists
from
the various major search engines themselves. Services participating in
the
panels include About.com, AltaVista, Go, Google, Inktomi, LookSmart,
NBCi,
Netscape/The Open Directory and RealNames. In addition to the main
track
about search engine marketing issues, new concurrent sessions will
cover
making your own site searchable for visitors, creating a vertical
search
engine and coping with spider activity. There's also a series of
roundtable
discussions that will cover advanced search engine marketing issues. An
agenda and details about the conference, for attendees or potential
sponsors and exhibitors, can be found via the URL below.
Search Engine Strategies 2000 - Dallas
http://seminars.internet.com/sew/dallas00/
====================
Paid Inclusion At Search Engines Gains Ground
Previously, I've written generally about the many new ways in which
search
engines are trying to earn money from their search results. This month,
we'll take a closer look at one particular method, "paid inclusion,"
which
is now in place at Ask Jeeves, LookSmart and Inktomi.
In pay for inclusion, site owners pay money to guarantee that they will
be
included in a search engine's listings in greater depth than might
ordinarily occur. Paid inclusion does not guarantee that pages will be
ranked well for particular search terms. However, sites enrolling in
paid
inclusion programs are likely to receive greater traffic than those
that
don't.
To understand this, let's liken search engines to a lottery. When
someone
searches, it's almost as if a search engine spins a big barrel full of
millions of listings, to determine which listings will come up first in
its
results. In a lottery, the more tickets you have, the more likely it is
you'll win something. Similarly, with search engines, the more listings
you
have, the more likely you'll rank well for various searches.
I can't stress enough that paid inclusion is not equivalent to paid
placement programs that guarantee positions. For example, if you want
to be
number one for a particular search term at GoTo.com, which is a paid
placement search engine, you simply agree to pay more money than any
other
advertiser for the term. In contrast, advertisers are not guaranteed a
particular position in paid inclusion systems. They are simply sold
more
tickets in the search engine lottery, so to speak. That means they may
win
more often in the ranking game than might ordinarily happen, but they
would
still need to satisfy all the normal editorial criteria to do so.
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Paid Inclusion At Ask Jeeves
Ask Jeeves has experimented with paid inclusion over the past several
months, and now it's a standard part of its advertising offerings
called
"Answer Link." It works two ways. The editorial staff, after creating
listings in its usual fashion, may then suggest to the advertising
staff
that a particular site might be a good prospect for a paid inclusion
deal.
The advertising staff would then follow up to see if a deal could be
signed. Alternatively, an advertiser might approach Ask Jeeves about
participating in the program. The editorial staff would then review the
site, suggest some types of questions it might be useful in answering,
and
the advertising side would then complete the deal.
In either case, pages from the partner's site eventually appear as
answers
to the Ask Jeeves questions that appear at the top of its search
results
page, in the "I have found answers to the following questions" section.
However, the partner can't control exactly what questions it will
appear
for, Ask Jeeves says. Instead, paid inclusion links will only appear if
the
search engine's normal ranking systems deem it relevant. In return, Ask
Jeeves is paid based on the amount traffic it sends to the partner.
Ask Jeeves stresses that only sites that provide quality information
will
appear in its results, whether there is paid partnership or not. It
also
points out that only about 5 percent of its knowledgebase is made up of
paid inclusion answers, nor does it plan to greatly increase this
percentage. But doesn't favoring some sites in response to money
penalize
other good ones? Yes, Ask Jeeves responds -- but that doesn't mean the
users themselves are penalized.
"For example, say we point to a site that lists stock quotes. A stock
quote
is a basic piece of information, so if one site has more in depth stock
information and quality financial content than another, then we are not
opposed to approaching that site to work with us in a paid
partnership,"
said Jonathan Silverman, product manager of Ask.com.
To see paid inclusion in action, try a search for "what should my blood
pressure be?" The top link that appears leads to a page from OnHealth,
an
Ask Jeeves advertiser and one of about 20 "basic knowledge" providers
that
also include companies such as Ticketmaster-CitySearch, Verizon, GE
Financial, ImproveNet, and AllBusiness. Ask Jeeves also has several
hundred
advertisers for ecommerce topics, such as Sears, Best Buy, Land's End
and
Garden.com.
The listing has no disclosure that an advertiser is benefiting from it.
Ask
Jeeves says during recent design testing, flagging paid inclusion links
wasn't seen as useful. The company also feels that since such paid
inclusion listings will only appear if they meet editorial standards,
there's no need to call them out from non-paid listings. However, Ask
Jeeves has added a link to its home page called "Editorial Guidelines
for
Answers" that explains how some answers come from paid partners and
that
these also meet editorial and ecommerce guidelines.
This is good, but I still think it would help if there was some type of
symbol integrated alongside the listings themselves, just to better
advise
those users who are sensitive about paid programs. Nor should this be
exclusive to Ask Jeeves. The entire search engine industry ought to be
considering some standard way of labeling such material, so consumers
of
information have a clear idea of what relationships may be involved.
Paid Inclusion At LookSmart
Over at LookSmart, much attention has been focused recently on the
relatively new change where all commercial web sites must pay a fee in
order to be considered for listing in the directory. However,
LookSmart's
"Subsite" paid inclusion program goes far beyond this.
Typically, most web sites might find their home page listed in one or
two
categories at LookSmart. Large web sites might have further
classification,
with a few key inside sections listed in appropriate categories. Under
Subsites, LookSmart editors do a deep review of a web site,
categorizing
individual pages they find with suitable content throughout the
directory.
Ultimately, a site could end up with over a hundred different listings,
if
not more. The result is that the site will appear in response to a far
greater range of queries than if only its home page was listed.
Paid inclusion at LookSmart has similarities to the system at Ask
Jeeves.
At the request of LookSmart's advertising department, LookSmart editors
will review a site and determine appropriate places they feel the
site's
content could be listed. Only content meeting regular editorial
standards
is said to be included, and listings aren't guaranteed to appear in
response to a particular search. This is especially true for LookSmart,
given that it can't control how its many partners rank the information
it
provides. In return for this work, LookSmart receives a per click fee
for
each visitor it sends to sites in the program.
While there are concerns that users might miss out finding sites that
don't
pay, LookSmart notes that its editors spend a significant amount of
time
searching the web for new sites to add to the directory, independent of
its
paid inclusion and submission systems. Additionally, the company says
its
recent acquisition of the Zeal.com community directory is also expected
to
help it ensure broad representation of valuable not-for-profit and
community sites.
LookSmart isn't restrictive in offering the Subsite program to one
company
in a particular business. Anyone who wishes to pay can be deeply
indexed,
regardless of whether their competitor is already in the program.
"We're
wide open so long, as the links meet our editorial standards," said
Scott
Stanford, LookSmart's vice president of listing services and ecommerce.
"We
have not signed any deals or exclusives."
The Subsite program was publicly launched in September, with mySimon
named
as the first advertiser. However, the program has been in beta testing
since April of this year, and now approximately 20 large sites are
represented, including eBay, through a deal just signed this week.
Try a search for "downloadable software" at LookSmart, and you'll see
an
example of paid inclusion link from mySimon that appears at the top of
the
"Reviewed Web Sites" section. You'll also see that, as with Ask Jeeves,
there's no disclosure -- nor do any of LookSmart's partners such as MSN
Search, iWon, Excite and AltaVista make any type of disclosure next to
the
LookSmart Subsite listings they display.
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Paid Inclusion At Inktomi
Inktomi's paid inclusion program has only recently gone live through a
partnership announced in September with MediaDNA and another announced
just
this week with Position Technologies, so expect to see it evolve as
the
program matures and as new partners are announced. FYI, Inktomi's first
partnership, announced in July with Network Solutions, isn't expected
to go
live until January.
At its core, paid inclusion with Inktomi means that site owners pay to
be
guaranteed that the web pages they select are included in its
crawler-based
listings and that these pages will be reindexed every 48 hours. See the
"Inktomi Debuts Self-Serve Paid Inclusion" article below for more
specifics
about the service.
That's the end of the guarantees. As with the other paid inclusion
programs
described, there is no assurance that pages will appear highly ranked
for
any particular search.
Given that Inktomi crawls the web, its pay for inclusion model is
potentially more worrisome to searchers than the ones run by Ask Jeeves
and
LookSmart. Human-powered directories, by their very nature, have never
been
inclusive of everything on the web. That's why major search sites using
directory information typically back this up with crawler-based
results. If
the human editors haven't categorized something, then the crawler
provides
a fall-through.
Because of this, a crawler is automatically expected to be inclusive of
everything. Indeed, the reason stories about search engine sizes have
continued to attract so much press is that the general public may
naturally
assume that a crawler will find everything on the web. That's never
been,
nor dare I say, never will be the case. Nevertheless, until the Inktomi
announcement, we've also never had a major crawler say that some sites
might be more deeply crawled for reasons other than feeling there was
essential content that should be listed.
So what's going to happen as the Inktomi program progresses? Will there
be
a general degradation of freshness and crawl depth, in order to make
the
paid inclusion model more attractive to site owners? Definitely not,
Inktomi says. Paid inclusion is mainly a way it sees for site owners to
share the cost of getting people to their content, plus it makes it
possible for Inktomi to list new content from hard to crawl sites that
it's
never carried before. Rather than a replacement for its regular
crawling,
paid inclusion is seen as an additional, supplementary system.
"We're going to continue crawling the web much as we have, using the
same
kind of popularity analysis to build the bulk of our index," said Troy
Toman, general manager of Inktomi's search solutions division. "We're
not
on a path where we'll say were going to remove every site in our index
unless they pay. It's really to go more after sites that would wish to
be
better represented in our index or people who want more timely
information
from their site made available."
Among the other crawlers, Go says it is readying a paid inclusion
system
with its own spidered results that may be unveiled in December.
Additionally, AltaVista is still determining what services it intends
to
market to webmasters. Paid inclusion could be one of these, though
AltaVista is sending out signals that its first product may allow site
owners to enhance their listings with highlighting or even pictures.
Notably, Google says it has no such plans for a paid inclusion system,
at
the moment.
"I think there are some significant philosophical issues," said Google
president Sergey Brin. "If someone searches for cancer, and there's a
really good cancer site out there, what if you don't have the answer
they
are looking for because that particular site didn't pay to be in
there."
There are certainly some pluses that paid inclusion can offer. It's not
unreasonable to expect that extremely large sites might help pick up
the
costs of making their content available, especially if that in turn
helps
the searching public in general. Such programs can also make content
that's
currently unreachable to spiders, such as locked in databases or behind
firewalls, easily accessible for the first time. Certainly such
programs
offer the opportunity for companies to interact with crawlers on a more
formal basis, rather than unproductively kept at arms length.
Nevertheless, while paid inclusion programs may impact the editorial
quality of search results far less than paid placement, paid inclusion
still raises concerns -- whether run through crawler-based search
engines
like Inktomi or human-powered services such as Ask Jeeves and
LookSmart.
The test will see whether these pioneers can prove over time that their
programs don't hurt the search experience -- or better, actually do
improve
it.
Ask Jeeves
http://www.askjeeves.com/
Ask Jeeves Editorial Guidelines
http://www.askjeeves.com/docs/about/policy.html
This page, linked from the Ask Jeeves home page, explains to users how
paid
partnerships may have a role in the answers Ask Jeeves provides.
LookSmart
http://www.looksmart.com/
LookSmart Earnings Looking Strong
smallcapcenter.com, Nov. 2, 2000
http://www.smallcapcenter.com/story.asp?mysection=sectors&mypage=Consumer+Goods%2C+Internet&storyid=9807
LookSmart's paid submission and paid inclusion programs are a big
reason
behind its better than expected earnings, which were recently
announced.
Listing revenues have gone from $600,000 in the first quarter, to $1.6
million in the second, then to $3.3 million in the third quarter just
announced. Last year, they were non-existent.
Inktomi Debuts Self-Serve Paid Inclusion
The Search Engine Report, Nov. 3, 2000
http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/00/11-inktomi.html
More about Inktomi's paid inclusion program and partners can be found
here.
Monetizing The Search
The Search Engine Report Sept. 4, 2000
http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/00/09-money.html
Goes into a range of other programs search engines are experimenting
with
to earn money and touches on issues relating to pay for inclusion.
Pay For Placement?
http://searchenginewatch.com/resources/paid-placement.html
Paid inclusion and even paid placement can solve some problems that
have
plagued search engines. Articles on this page go into more depth about
the
issues, pro and con. A new chart has also been added as a guide to
where
significant non-banner advertising components are showing up at
different
search engines.
====================
Inktomi Debuts Self-Serve Paid Inclusion
In a landmark move, Inktomi announced a new partnership with Position
Technologies this week that allows site owners to pay for guaranteed
inclusion in the Inktomi index. While paid submission (or "pay for
consideration") systems have operated at human-powered Yahoo and
LookSmart
for some time, we've never had a major crawler-based service offer
something similar. In addition, paid inclusion means that pages will
absolutely be guaranteed to be listed, while in paid submission
systems, no
such assurances are offered. A full article about the changes can be
found
via the link below:
Inktomi Debuts Self-Serve Paid Inclusion
The Search Engine Report, Nov. 3 2000
http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/00/11-inktomi.html
====================
Submitting For Free
Now that all of LookSmart's major partners are offering the paid
LookSmart
Express Submit program on their own Add URL pages, a number of people
believe that they must also pay a fee to be listed in the non
LookSmart-powered portions of these search engines. Huh? What? Don't
worry.
The article below takes you on a little tour, where I hope to make more
sense out of the whole submission mess that has developed.
Submitting For Free
The Search Engine Report, Nov. 3 2000
http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/00/11-freesubmit.html
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