MakeMeTop

1. SMA-UK Launches. Search Marketing Association UK (SMA-UK) is a new organisation designed to promote Search Engine Marketing across the UK. Below is the recent press release published about SMA-UK's inception which also details the organisation's main objectives.

A working group of search engine marketing professionals in the UK has come together to plan the formulation of a UK based trade association.

The proposed Search Marketing Association UK (SMA-UK) will provide a platform to inform and educate the marketplace of the benefits of search marketing in the overall marketing mix, as well is giving its members an industry voice.

Barry Lloyd of search marketing firm MakeMeTop is acting Chairman of the group, with Andy Atkins-Kruger of search marketing firm Web Certain as acting Deputy.

The Chairman and Deputy Chairman were elected by a secret ballot, single transferable voting system monitored by the Electoral Reform Society with votes being cast by the members of the working group.

"We intend all elections will be held in the same manner in the future, with early elections from the full membership to be held as a matter of urgency" said Barry Lloyd.

"Presently, we are a group of people working to create an association, but we felt it was important to sidestep the trap of being seen as self-appointed so we chose to use the Electoral Reform Society to conduct an independently verified secret ballot of the group to elect the Chairman and Deputy Chairman" added Andy Atkins-Kruger.

An existing US based association was not seen by the group to be appropriate in its operations for the UK market. Barry Lloyd, commenting on the reason for a new UK based association said: "The UK search engine market is currently the second largest in the World outside the United States. After looking at the way trade associations are being developed internationally it has became apparent that the UK should have its own association for this growing sector, set up in a manner to reflect the specific way that both businesses and trade associations operate in the UK and other parts of Europe."

Andy Atkins-Kruger sees the first priority of the working group as rapidly developing a strong membership base: "Now we have an embryonic organisation, a set of objectives and a direction - we need more professionals to come and support our already enthusiastic group to help make the association successful."

The current members of the working group are:

Barry Lloyd MakeMeTop
Andy Atkins-Kruger Web Certain
Paddy Bolger Top Pile
Richard Gregory Corporem Global
Edward Cowell Neutralize (*\*)
Colin Irwin Spex Internet
Simon Collingridge BizCom Services
Jason Cartwright GCDM
Ammon Johns Propellernet
Mike Grehan Smart Interactive

Among the many objectives the working group has already identified are:

To be a central representative body to put the views of search engine marketing companies and professional consultants to Government departments and agencies, Parliament, the European Commission and Parliament and other relevant organisations.

To be a research and statistical centre, to aggregate and publish statistics, and to provide analysis on search engine marketing and other relevant market information.

To be a technical centre, providing commentary, guidance and advice on all legal and other regulatory developments of relevance to search engine marketing.

To provide a forum for the exchange of non-competitive information.

To promote the search engine marketing industry.

To assist in representing search engine marketing professionals and companies with suppliers to the industry.

To promote best business practice guidelines for dealing with clients of search engine marketing services.

To promote the development of education and training for search marketing professionals.

To promote and support affiliations with other international search marketing trade organisations that have similar objectives to the SMA-UK

Supporters of the proposed new association from all areas of the search engine marketing sector including, practitioners, agencies, vendors and media companies are encouraged to contact the working group with their thoughts and ideas for further development. A mailing list has been set up and interested parties will be sent a Prospectus within the next 3 weeks.

2. MSN drops all Paid Inclusion

MSN has dropped inclusion of Yahoo's paid inclusion results. This means that subscribers to the old Inktomi program as well as the newer Yahoo paid inclusion programs (including Trusted Feeds) are no longer showing up in the current MSN results. Note that pages that have been crawled independently of paid inclusion are still included!

This appears to have been done in advance of the launch of MSN's new search engine which seems to be near to launch date. We expect MSN to produce their own version of paid inclusion within a few months of reslease.

Other Information - 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 Overture UK (UK only). Only use Yahoo US submission if you can't get in through Yahoo UK! Listings also available in the standard listings via Overture's SiteMatch program from $49 per page for inclusion and either 15 cents or 30 cents per click thereafter.
Yahoo UK! - £199 for business and commercial sites (review one-off, non-recurring fee). SiteMatch program available.
SiteMatch - it powers some or all of the results on About, Sprinks, Overture, HotBot, Overture UK, Espotting, AltaVista, Lycos, AllTheWeb and several UK portals. Costs from $49 per page per year plus 15 cents or 30 cents per click!
Google - still free - though you can get paid listings via AdWords or AdWords Select if you want to appear in less than 2-3 months! Powers some results on AOL and BT LookSmart network backup results in the UK.
ODP - completely free.
LookSmart - Now offers free submission and is changing in to a PPC engine. No longer on our must do list since losing MSN UK and MSN US full time. Still appearing on MSN occasionally.
AltaVista - replaced by Yahoo Search!
AllTheWeb - replaced by Yahoo Search!
MSN - Overture for top listings plus Yahoo Search (without SiteMatch).
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
Overture UK - minimum bid 10p - provides results to many UK versions of SEs plus ISPs such as Freeserve. Pay for placement.
Espotting - minimum bid 10p - provides results to several UK and European portals and via many affiliates. Pay for placement.
Teoma - Free crawler - powers Ask Jeeves US plus Ask Jeeves UK and is now starting to be sold as an alternative engine database (like Google and Inktomi).
Ask UK - pulls from Teoma.

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.

Our Search Engine Spy site has details of many UK directories and search engines as well as tips on submission and optimisation.

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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2. MSN drops all Paid Inclusion

Other Information - Which search engines cost what?