The Oxford Knowledge Company

If you attended the Internet World exhibition in London recently you might have been surprised to discover that a relatively new type of service run by espotting.com (http://www.espotting.com) allows you to 'buy' your way in to the search engines.

 

The truth is that this practice has been going on for some years now, pioneered by the search engine GoTo (http://www.goto.com). An atypically pragmatic (for the times) recognition that not everything on the Internet could remain free for ever, GoTo offered businesses the chance to bid for keywords with which their web site entry would be associated.

For example, if you wanted to be the top listed web site for the keyword 'aspirin', on other search engines such as Yahoo and AOL you had little choice but to develop content and metatags, invest in domain names and employ a series of other tricks, in order to get a top listing.  In GoTo's model, you simply bid for the keyword - if you were willing to pay more than anyone else, then your Web site would gain the top ranking for searches on that word.

With a performance-related revenue model (you pay only when users click-though to your Web site after seeing it in a list of search results), the search engine company had a more directly relevant way to provide measurable results.

Coldly realistic when the rest of the industry seemed to want to give away the ranch, GoTo's 'get-what-you-pay-for' model may have seemed unnecessary.  After all, it was and remains possible to apply for free listing in much more popular search engines such as Yahoo and Altavista.

More shrewd observers, however, made the point that GoTo were simply reading the writing on the wall - with the number of web sites and HTML pages increasing almost exponentially, it was simply impossible to guarantee a top listing for all but the most specifically targeted Web pages. Even now, searching on "sony stereo" at Google will not list the home page of Sony Electronics in the top ten results.

Were GoTo's search results only available to people searching on GoTo, the model may have failed, since GoTo's has never really been in the same popularity league as Yahoo, MSN, and AOL or other major search portals.  However, partnerships between GoTo and popular search portals AOL, Altavista, Lycos, Netscape and others mean that users of the latter group will view results from GoTo at the top of their search results, in the form of 'sponsored links'.

Paying for a listing in the search index was then slowly introduced in all sorts of inauspicious ways to the majority of main search engines.  By now, every major search engine offers paid inclusion and/or paid placement.  Added to the existing methods of advertising on search engines (primarily banner ads), Web site marketers now have a potentially bewildering suite of options, some of which require a fairly sophisticated level of understanding of how search engines are used, to extract the most appropriate level of service.

So what are the best options?

For those promoting a site to a UK audience, espotting.com and GoTo.com (UK) offer a chance for advertisers' search results to appear in AskJeeves, UKPlus, Netscape, NTL (espotting.com) or Freeserve, AskJeeves, Altavista UK (GoTo), to name just the major partners.

GoTo charges a set-up fee for providing some initial consultation (probably worthwhile since they hopefully have an intimate understanding of how their search engine is used!), and then pay-for-clicks depending on the bid for your keyword. For example, suppose you want to bid on the term 'epilepsy': currently the Medtronic site "Seizures and Fainting" pays 7p per click-through, so you would have to bid more than this to 'win' the term.  However, the search term "epilepsy drug" may be far more appropriate to your Web site and since it is not currently 'owned' by any advertiser, would be a cheaper and more relevant choice.  In addition, customers of GoTo benefit from access to a tool which shows how often relevant terms have been searched for in the past month.  This helps customers to decide which terms on which to bid.

Espotting.com offers much the same story, including the initial consultation, possibly with fewer other customers to compete with at this stage - the term 'epilepsy' has not been bought, whilst the high bidder on the much broader term 'healthcare' snapped it up for a mere 5p per click!

Another very easy to use keyword advertising strategy is Google's do-it-yourself Google AdWords (accessible from the front page of all Googles).  In just a few minutes you can create and preview a small box ad which appears in the right hand sidebar of the Google search results.

For example, try searching on 'contact lenses' on Google: as well as search results, a number of sponsored links appear.  The top ones are from premium sponsors, whilst those in the sidebar are Google Adwords.  The mechanism for payment is simple: $15, $12, $10 (per thousand ads shown) for positions 1, 2, and 3 respectively, and $8 per thousand for positions 4 through 8 (at the time of writing).

Keyword advertising of both types brings some benefits to the Web searcher.  Adverts are not accepted unless they are truly relevant to the search term with which they are associated.  Relevancy of search results is thereby guaranteed.  Most paid-for links are likely to be selling something, so unless you are searching for something to buy, the sponsored links might safely be ignored on most occasions. For those on the lookout for products or services, however, they act like a magnet to the needle in the haystack, dragging out a handful of genuinely useful search results to where they are easily seen.

The question of course is: does it work?

Two pieces of research at least would appear to back up claims that it does.  One is a report from Forrester which states that "83% of media buys will have a performance based component by 2003".  Another comes from NPD Group, a research group specializing in consumer purchasing and behavior.  This claims that search listings (on search portals) outperform banner and tile advertisements by 2 to 1.

GoTo's revenues continue to increase steadily, although their shares (trading on the Nasdaq at around $20) have not yet recovered to the all-time high of $91 (11/99).  Like everything else on the Web, maybe pay-for-performance search engines will not be as big as originally hoped. But in a world of fierce competition for inclusion in those precious first 2 pages of search results (apparently, all anyone really looks at), paying one's way may be the only realistic choice.