| The Axandra newsletter archive - 30 December 2003 |
| Welcome to the last issue of the Search Engine Facts newsletter in 2003.
We wish you and your family a Happy New Year 2004. Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter and for your support in 2003. In the news: Lycos and Overture expand a deal, another search engine might go public, FindWhat is still reluctant to buy Espotting and paid inclusion might need to change its ways. Table of contents:
We hope that you enjoy this issue and that it helps you to get more out of your web site. Please pass this newsletter on to your friends. Best regards, |
| 1. Happy New Year 2004! |
We'll continue with our regular articles next week. |
| 2. Search engine news of the week |
| Lycos Europe, Overture expand deal, involve Yahoo!
"Lycos Europe continued its eclectic approach to paid search Tuesday, renewing its deal with Yahoo!'s Overture Services. This time the search firm's parent will also participate, collaborating with Lycos Europe on e-commerce and community products. [...] For Overture, every recent contract renewal has been a victory, as its acquisition by Yahoo! called into question whether it would be viewed as a competitor or partner. In fact, Lycos Europe's cousin, Lycos, has filed suit against Overture over the acquisition and replaced Overture's listings for Google's. Terra Lycos owns Lycos outright but has just a 32 percent investment in Lycos Europe." FindWhat.com in new talks to buy Espotting "FindWhat.com [...] said its planned acquisition of Espotting Media Inc. will be delayed by a month while the parties renegotiate the agreement. To allow for the delay, FindWhat.com and British-based search engine Espotting have extended the deadline to Jan. 31 from Dec. 31, after which either company could pull out of the deal." Yahoo users most interested in KaZaa in 2003 "The annual report lists the top 10 most frequently searched-for terms on Yahoo's search engine over the entire year and is one measure of consumer interests and trends, Yahoo said. KaZaa was followed by searches for fictional character Harry Potter, of book and movie fame, in the second spot, and U.S. television show 'American Idol' in third place." Another search engine might plan to go public "The US IT media have already found her as have investors wanting a piece or all of the business she launched out of Brisbane, MooterSearch. [...] Our niche is going to be people like academics, business people, people with a bit of grey matter. [...] The push now is to make Mooter profitable and attractive enough to float or attract investment from the people who can also bring something other than money to the company. We have not found any reluctance (to invest). We are the only search entity with the potential to have an IPO at the moment." |
| 3. Articles of the week |
| Outlook: paid inclusion needs to change its ways
"Paid inclusion programs that currently have a cost-per-click pricing component must eliminate it, as the model has a fundamental and inherent conflict of interest," the report said. For one, it continued, until paid inclusion programs are solely based on a time-based pricing model (i.e., an annual fee per URL), uncertainty and doubt will continue to cloud the industry. [...] Under a cost-per-click model, claims that the rankings of paid inclusion customers are unaffected cannot be believed, as the search index has a clear financial incentive to promote rankings. Currently, paid inclusion programs are sold on the basis of providing publishers with a certainty that content will be crawled at a set frequency over time. Paid inclusion programs should be priced according to this premise as well."
"A year ago, American companies and investors were deeply worried about the economic and fiscal costs of the looming war in Iraq, and whether this could curtail a tentative US recovery. [...] This holiday season, all the talk is about the upcoming Google initial public offering. Google has all the qualities of a late 1990s-style rocketship-ride IPO -- great technology, great team, great market space. On the other hand, by all accounts the company is managed like a 20-person garage shop rather than a $US800 million business with 30 per cent margins."
"Venture capitalists have been treading carefully since their dot-com misadventures, but still occasionally wander off the beaten path in search of a runaway success. [...] Few venture capitalists were initially willing to take a chance on startups developing online search engines, reasoning there was no way to make much money from a free service. In the past year, though, advertisers paid an estimated $2 billion to have their links displayed alongside relevant search results, helping to turn industry leader Google into a prized investment. Just because something doesn't appear to have a viable business model today doesn't mean it will always be that way."
"The search marketing sector has been the hub of acquisition activity lately. Earlier this year, Yahoo! grabbed Inktomi's Web portal search engine and pay-per-click search firm Overture, which had previously purchased search engine AltaVista, and Fast Web portal AllTheWeb. Now the buying frenzy has expanded to include not only the search segment, but email and affiliate marketing, too." "Many investors are eagerly waiting for Google, the Web search titan, to go public. But those same investors, many of them still smarting from losses when technology stocks plummeted, may not be ready to jump at just any new technology offering in 2004." |
| 4. Recommended resources |
| What happened in 2003?
If you want to find out what happened in the search engine world in 2003, just take a look at our search engine facts archive. You'll find all articles, news, tips and tricks since our first newsletter in 2002.
Which tools can help you to get more visitors, more customers and more sales in 2004? If you want to get more visitors and customers to your web site in 2004, try our top-rated web site promotion tools: ARELIS is a top rated software program that helps you to build a powerful business network quickly and easily. You'll benefit from highly targeted free traffic to your web site, new business contacts, a higher link popularity, higher search engine rankings and more sales. IBP is the award-winning web site promotion and search engine submission software tool that helps you to get more revenue with high search engine rankings. IBP helps you with all aspects of web site promotion from web page optimization to search engine submission. Both ARELIS and IBP have received numerous 5 out 5 five ratings from software sites. |
| 5. Previous articles |
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