The News this Month!

1. LookSmart US changes the Rules!

LookSmart US, in a highly controversial change of policy, switched from being a directory to a strange hybrid mixture of a PPC engine and directory in the middle of April! Prior to this, LookSmart charged up to $299 for a review (rather like Yahoo!) and if accepted you would appear in their directory which also powers the directory results on MSN. This was the main reason for submitting a site into LookSmart.

On April 11th, 2002 - LookSmart decided that instead of a review payment and a listing, clients should pay 15 cents per referral! This applied to not only new customers - but existing paid-review listings. To assist existing clients, they were offered 100 free 'clicks' per month, provided they sign up for the new service. While it was expected that LookSmart may introduce an Annual review fee to try and attract continual revenue from site owners, this method of gaining money was a complete surprise to all in the industry.

Usually a PPC model consists of two elements, the key phrase you want to appear on 'blue widgets' and a bid price. The higher the bid price, the higher your ranking - and you only appear when that key phrase is looked for by the surfer. On LookSmart there is a flat price of 15 cents and you may (or may not) appear for any of the words used in the title and description of your entry in their directory which was written by a LookSmart editor. So if you had a site about 'blue widgets', you only sell blue widgets and your entry was 

Fast Widgets and Company

Provides information on blue widgets and compares them to green, white and red spurgles. Free comparison and check prices online.

You are likely to appear for phrases such as:

green widgets, white widgets, red widgets, blue spurgles, free widgets, spurgle prices etc., etc.

None of these phrases are that relevant to your site as you only sell blue widgets, yet you would be charged 15 cents per click. If you run out of clicks, you are removed from the directory AND MSN!

Most sites use their 100 clicks in a few days, some in a few hours - and clients are being asked to authorise expenditure of anything from a few hundred to several thousand $ per month to prevent their listings from disappearing. It is also almost impossible to find out where these clicks are coming from, or the search terms used as they don't appear to show up in user traffic logs.

All in all this has caused grave dissatisfaction with the service and many clients are now abandoning LookSmart US. We won't use the service as we are unable to reconcile the clicks charged with actual traffic to our sites and have discovered LookSmart adding their click-through links to Inktomi and LookSmart UK listings which we have also paid for. So we get a double charge!

Thankfully, LookSmart UK have said they are not going to implement the same policy (yet) and listings appearing in MSN UK are not effected. It will be interesting to see if LookSmart US change their policy in light of the anger expressed on sites such as www.actdumb.com and IHelpYouServices Forums.

2. Teoma appears on Ask UK.

As mentioned last month, Teoma results have replaced Direct Hit in the US and were appearing on Ask US. We started seeing signs that Teoma results with a UK bias are starting to appear as the main answers to questions on Ask UK. Ask Jeeves is a very popular engine in the UK and we expect that this will add to it's popularity. The quickest way to get into Teoma is through paid-spidering which is available via www.ineedhits.com although Teoma does crawl sites on its' own.

3. AOL US goes with Google!

In another surprise move at the end of the month AOL US dropped Overture for its' Sponsored Listings and moved to Google's AdWords Select program. They also announced that they would not be renewing their contract with Inktomi and would be switching to Google results before August. This is bad news for Inktomi who are now left only with MSN as a big user of their search results - but they may have some better news next month! Nothing has been announced yet on what will happen to results in the UK, though we expect that Google will replace Inktomi there too - but that Overture UK will continue to supply sponsored results.

4. Yahoo! to Change?

Yahoo's contract with Google expires in June this year. It was anticipated that they would renew with Google and use Google's new AdWords Select program to share income with Google and offset the costs of paying Google some $7 million per year for use of their search engine results as back-up results when there are no Yahoo directory listings to show. However, in a surprise move Overture signed a 3 year deal with Yahoo as the exclusive pay-per-click provider to Yahoo which appears to rob Google of the opportunity to provide these results. This means that Yahoo have to choose between paying Google to renew the contract (unless Google are feeling very generous) and changing to another supplier who may share revenue with them. All other search engines can do this including Inktomi, AltaVista, FAST and Teoma. The news will be announced soon as to have been awarded the Contract - and we are sure there is quite a battle going on behind the scenes. The Yahoo contract has helped made Google the success it is - and the same will hold true of whoever they choose.

5. Which search engines cost what?

With fees changing every month, we are keeping this list updated regularly - so users can see what the latest costs are. As always, not a lot of free submissions out there so don't get taken in by the ever growing list of people offering mass-submissions. They just don't work for any of the main search facilities that drive real traffic.

Here are the main search facilities and the basic costs for faster review/inclusion. You can get discounts for more URLs.

• Yahoo US! - $299 for business and commercial sites (review only and then annual inclusion fee). Top listings available via Overture (US only) and Espotting (UK only). Only use Yahoo US submission if you can't get in through Yahoo UK!
• Yahoo UK! - £199 for business and commercial sites (review one-off, non-recurring fee).
• Inktomi - it powers some or all of the results on AOL, MSN, iWon, LookSmart, About, Sprinks, Overture, HotBot, Overture UK, Espotting and most UK portals. Costs from $39 per page per year!
• Google - still free - though you can get paid listings via AdWords if you want to appear in less than 2-3 months!
• ODP - completely free.
• LookSmart - feeds results to AltaVista, Excite, MSN, iWon, CNN, Time Warner and another 370 ISPs. $49 (plus $150 deposit) then 15 cents per referral and (if you want to appear in the UK) £149 for LS UK. Description changes cost extra. 
• AltaVista - still used by a significant number of users from $60 per page per year. Can get to the top by paying Overture. LookSmart for directory.
• FAST - provides results to a number of European searches as well as the widely used Lycos engines now $12 per URL per year.
• MSN - LookSmart for Directory and Overture for top listings plus Inktomi which uses paid inclusion.
• UKPlus - a £99 fee to get reviewed in a reasonable time-frame.
• Overture - provides featured results to many meta-engines, plus AltaVista, Excite, HotBot (US), Lycos (US), MSN and Netscape - plus many other search portals. Pay for placement. Minimum fee £25
• Teoma - powers Ask Jeeves US plus Ask Jeeves UK and is now starting to be sold as an alternative engine database (like Google and Inktomi) - $25.00 per page.

It will become harder and harder to get a free listing if you are a business - but make sure, before you pay the engines, that you understand what you are doing to make sure your pages/site appear high up in the listings! These payments specify rapid inclusion - not high rankings. The site/pages still need to be optimised.

If you have any further questions about the major search engines - why not ask your questions about this or many other subjects on our free information forums?

We also have many resources which are designed to make your optimisation tasks easier. As always, MakeMeTop is here to help get you seen on the web. If you have any queries, comments or feedback on the information contained in this report, please let us know. It must be stated that all comments and ideas listed in this document come from the editor's research and are solely his opinions! For more information and tips on getting top search engine rankings visit Search Engine World, Pandia and Search Engine Watch or read our tips on designing a search engine friendly page. See other news, views and search engine happenings at sites we find useful at Webmaster World, Pandia, Search Engine Watch and Ihelpyou Forums. A free weekly newsletter is available from High Rankings Advisor and is also well worth the read.

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