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More and more search engine portals
are on the dole, looking for a quick handout to keep the wolves from
their doors. In fact, as I'll look at today, soon only one of the spider
based engines won't have a Paid Inclusion program.
The overriding priority for most of the major engines is survival, and
the compromises made in the name of survival have been significant. In
many cases, once proud engines have sold the very essence of their
functionality in return for enough incoming revenue just to keep the
doors open. Recently, further announcements from AltaVista have added to
the confusion surrounding search engine marketing. Although
I've looked at the topic before, I
think it's time we look back at your paid placement options and what it
really means to your website.
Break open the Piggy Bank
The fact is, search engine optimization is no longer a free form of
advertising and the Net is no longer an even playing field for the big
boys and the small independent players. If you want to be found for
keywords on the big engines, you're going to have to budget for it. The
question is, how much and where to spend it? In this NetProfit, we'll be
looking at the crawler based engines: Goto, Google, AltaVista, Inktomi
and Excite. In Part Two, we'll be looking at the directories, Yahoo,
Looksmart and Open Directory. In Part Three, I'll look more at the
future of the search engine industry (again) and also the whole question
of search engine optimization and if it's still needed.
Bringing Out the Yard Stick
When looking a paid placement options, I'll be using just one criteria
in my recommendations to you: where do you get the most bank for your
buck. I'll look at the engines, the traffic they receive and the cost to
tap into that traffic. With the fact that paying for search engine
traffic is now inevitable, it's important to know you're getting maximum
value for what you do spend.
To help you in this task, I've set out the following rating system
Express Submission vs. Paid
Inclusion vs. Paid Placement
First of all, I should clarify a point that causes confusion when we
talk about paying for search engine traffic. There are three basic
models out there: Express Submissions, Paid Inclusion and Paid
Placement. Here's the differences:
Express Submission: this refers to the program started by Yahoo
and later adopted by LookSmart (which has recently gone to a Paid
Placement model). You pay a flat fee ($199 US) to guarantee that an
editor from these directories will review your site for inclusion. There
is no guarantee that you will be included, but generally the chances are
pretty good. The amount you pay has no impact on where you will rank in
these directories.
Paid Inclusion: Here, you pay a flat yearly fee to ensure that
the search engine's spider will include you on it's regular rounds.
Started by Inktomi, AltaVista has also recently indicated that they're
going this route. You pay per distinct URL (for example, each page of
your site would be a different URL) and the rate is between $20 and $35
for the first URL, with discounts for additional ones. Again, the amount
you pay has no impact on how you'll rank, it simply means you're
guaranteed to be in the index.
Paid Placement: Here, you do pay for a specific placement. Goto
is the best example of this, where you bid for certain rankings on
specific phrases. In Goto's case, the bids are open and you can be
bumped from the top spot at any time. The recent paid placement program
announced by LookSmart gives you a bit more of a hold on the top spot,
as you pay for a spot for a specified period of time. Paid placement can
take the form of the entire set of search results, as in Goto's case, or
strategically placed sponsored links, like Google's AdWords.
Engine by Engine
Goto
I have a love hate relationship going with Goto. I disagree with their
whole philosophy of providing search results based on who pays the most,
but when it comes to getting coverage on the Net for your paid placement
listings, Goto can't be beat. Currently, Goto listings can be found on
AltaVista, Lycos, AOL, Netscape, Go, NBCi and many other popular online
search destinations.
Goto claims to give you 75% coverage of the Net with their Premium
listings (these are the top 3 spots). Technically they're right, but the
vast majority of searchers still prefer going with the unsponsored
search results first. A heading such as "Sponsored Links", "Partner
Search Results" or "Featured Results" usually indicates Goto's listings
on partner sites. Danny Sullivan has often said he'd like to see
agreement on how these paid listings are named, so the user doesn't
become confused. I'd have to agree.
According to our numbers, which are taken from the log files of our
clients, Goto's main site generates about 5.9% of all search engine
traffic. It's a little more difficult to break out the traffic coming
from Goto listings on partner sites, but we estimate it adds another 3
to 3.5%, bringing the total to 8.9 to 9.4% of all traffic. Obviously,
this is a far cry from the somewhat misleading 75% mark mentioned in
Goto's marketing material. This is partly because the 75% number refers
to potental coverage, not to actual traffic. It's a big difference, but
of course the distinction isn't made too clear in Goto's sales claims.
How much will Goto cost? It really depends on the keywords. A minimum
bid is 5 cents per click and Goto has a minimum deposit of $50.00. I did
a quick check (on July 16, don't be surprised if prices are higher by
the time you read this) on the going price for some keyword phrases at
Goto. They ranged from relatively reasonable to downright insane. And
the ironic thing is, the highest prices are being paid by people who
should know better. You could snag top billing for "Cancun hotels" for
$.31 a click. "Hawaiian hotels" will cost you $.41. Want to be number
one for "software"? The price was surprisingly cheap at just $.51, but
then again, who searches just for software? "Cheap airfares" is $.65.
Now, for the other end of the scale. Top spot for "online casinos" is
$5.96 per click. "Web hosting" is an astronomical $6.80 per click. Even
"search engine positioning" goes for $3.95 a click.
The nice thing about Goto is it's relatively easy to decide if it's
worth it. How much are you willing to spend per person to get them to
your site? What's your closing ratio per visitor? If my keyword was
going for 30 or 40 cents, I'd give it a try. It it's 3 or 4 dollars or
higher, I'd have a tough time justifying the cost, which is probably why
you won't find searchengineposition.com on the top of the relevant Goto
listings.
One other note on Goto that I should throw in before I go. One of our
clients has secured top spots for a number of his keywords in Goto.
According to Goto's account management tool, he received 183 click
throughs for these keywords in one month. But, when looking at his
visitor logs, we only found 42 visitors from Goto. Now, these visitors
could have come from partner sites, right? Yes, but according to the
clients logs, he only received 113 visits from all search engines
combined. Confused? So were we. We're currently looking into the
situation.
My Rating for Goto, at less than 60 cents:
My Rating for Goto, at more than 60 cents:
For more on Goto, check out the Nov 11. NetProfit,
Can Goto Provide a Total Positioning
Solution?
Inktomi
Inktomi was the first engine to introduce a paid inclusion program.
Currently, you're looking at a cost of $30 for the first URL, with the
cost dropping the more URL's you add. It should be noted that every
single page on your site counts as a URL, so if your site is 500 pages
and you want to make sure Inktomi indexes them all, you'd be paying
about $6000 per year.
Is it worth it? It's really difficult for me to say yes on this one.
Lately, Inktomi's search partners have been dropping the service faster
than Pet.com share certificates. A long line of recent defections have
left Inktomi with less than 5% of the total search engine pie. In my
opinion, Inktomi is in a doomed middle ground of not generating enough
revenue to survive and not offering a good enough product to ever hope
of recovering. If you're considering Paid Inclusion on Inktomi, do it
for 5 to 10 likely entry pages, including your home page. Don't bother
with the whole site.
As I mentioned in a
previous NetProfit, Inktomi's recent moves has affected the value of
their search results and I think this has been reflected in the number
of partners dropping them. As a provider of relevant search results,
Inktomi has lost too much ground to the competition, notably Google, to
ever catch up. Expect to see more signs of desperation from Inktomi in
the near future.
My Rating for Inktomi (top 10 pages):
My Rating for Inktomi (more than 10 pages):
AltaVista
As goes Inktomi, so too goes AltaVista. Like Inktomi, AltaVista is now
offering a paid inclusion program, albeit at a steeper price. The first
URL at AltaVista will cost you $78 per year, with prices dropping to $48
for the next 9, $38 for the next 90, and $24 for any other URLs, up to a
maximum of 500.
AltaVista has become the biggest panhandler in the search engine biz,
more than willing to sell it's corporate soul to the highest bidder. In
addition to the Paid Inclusion scheme, AltaVista features both Goto and
their own sponsored listings, as well as sharing revenue from any
Looksmart Business Express submissions done through their own site.
AltaVista is on its last legs, as is shown by the fact that their market
share of the search engine traffic has fallen in the past year from
about 15% to about 7%. Gee, do you think it's because they've totally
bastardized their search results, completely alienating users and
webmasters alike? Don't be surprised if AltaVista is the next portal to
close their doors.
My Rating for AltaVista (top 10 pages):
My Rating for AltaVista (more than 10 pages):
Google
Google has always made a clear distinction between paid advertising and
their sponsored listings. And, to their credit, it has resulted in
better results and expanding market share.
Currently, Google has two locations for sale.
AdWords lets you create your own ad, which will appear in boxes along
the right side of search results for the keywords or key phrases you
specify. Each time someone searches for a phrase and your ad is shown,
you'll pay one and a half cents. A word of advice to new advertisers.
Start with specific phrases very relevant to your product or service and
see what your click through rate is. If you go with single generic
phrases, you'll be spending a lot of money trying to attract unqualified
traffic that won't buy anything.
Google's Premium Ad Sponsorship will move your listing to the top of the
page, highlighted in a box for specified key phrases. Rates aren't
published on the site, but be prepared to pay substantially more than
you would for AdWords
Google's rates for Adwords are quite reasonable, but I have no hard data
on click through rates. Google claims their click through rate is up to
5 times higher than the industry average, which would put it at 2 to 3%.
If this is the case, you'll be paying about 75 cents a click.
Google does capture a significant portion of search engine traffic.
According to our numbers, Google itself generates 26.6% of all traffic,
with its Yahoo web page results adding another 8%. Our numbers appear to
be much higher than other published ratings, but everybody has shown
Google coming on strong in the last year, while other search portals
have seen their traffic dwindling.
Other than AdWords and the Premium Ad slots, Google has announced no
plans for a paid inclusion Program or any other paid placement revenue
schemes. "We have no plans for a paid inclusion program. As we've stated
in the past, our search results represent our editorial integrity, and
we have no plans to alter our automated process, which works very well
in gathering information and delivering highly relevant results," said
spokesperson Cindy McCaffrey.
Google seems content to realize their revenue from their two advertising
vehicles and by licensing their search technologies for corporate
websites. By the way, Google expects to be profitable this year.
My Rating for Google AdWords:
Paid Inclusion..Coming Soon to an Engine Near You
In addition to the paid inclusion programs mentioned above, two other
crawler based engines have announced plans to follow in Inktomi's and
AltaVista's footsteps. Both Excite and Fast are planning to launch their
paid inclusion programs later this year. That would leave Google as the
sole hold out amongst major spider based engines from the paid inclusion
Excite
Right now, in addition to Excite's index results, there are also 3
featured listings at the bottom of the search page from FindWhat, a Goto
clone. Findwhat's bid prices are a bit less than Goto's ("search engine
positioning", 2.22, "online casinos" $3.56, "web hosting" 2.84), but the
prominence of the search results also leave a lot to be desired.
However, if you're paying by the click, that's not really a concern.
Excite's Paid Inclusion program is still in the planning stages for
later this year. Excite@Home, the parent company, is seeing how it will
integrate into other subscription services its portal may offer.
According to our numbers, Excite currently generates about 8.5% of all
search engine traffic.
My Rating for FindWhat/Excite (less than 60 cents):
My Rating for FindWhat/Excite (more than 60 cents):
Fast
Fast is also looking at a Paid Inclusion program, which is currently in
beta testing. No word on prices yet. It should be unveiled in the fall.
In the next NetProfit, I'll be looking at Yahoo and the other
directories. In the meantime, in the midst of writing this, it seems
that consumers are already lashing out at the search engines for
"selling out".
See
our article on this.
For
more on Paid Submissions and Inclusion, see Danny Sullivan's recent
article on www.searchenginewatch.com
Or the previous NetProfit on Paid
Submissions: The Price of Being Found. |
SEO