Where Are Search Engines Going? Paid Inclusion Trend Emerges

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The Search Engine Strategies conference and show, sponsoredby AltaVista, Search Engine Watch and Internet.com on August16-17 provided a glimpse of several emerging search trends,the biggest trend is t...
The Search Engine Strategies conference and show, sponsoredby AltaVista, Search Engine Watch and Internet.com on August16-17 provided a glimpse of several emerging search trends,the biggest trend is toward "Paid Inclusion." The show, heldin San Francisco at the Fairmont Hotel on Nob Hill, provideda look at where search is headed. Paid inclusion is the latest of several revenue producingmodels considered by search engines as the cost of indexinga much larger and more complex web increases and advertisingrevenue declines.
Paid inclusion was started quietly by severalpreviously free search engines as a revenue producing moverecently. Virtually everyone scrambled for new business models whenbanner advertising effectiveness declined steeply in 2001.Search engines had relied heavily on banner advertising togenerate the only income they were seeing in sparse times.When the tech economy took a nosedive in 2001, thejustification given by advertising companies for continuedbanner advertising was now as a "Branding" strategy ratherthan a sales technique.
To satisfy investor demands for such absurd things as "profit"the search engines began probing for new cash infusions andrealized that they could no longer rely on advertising tosupport free submissions. Since nobody was looking at bannerads any more (or at least not clicking through) support forfree search listing nearly disappeared.
Who benefits from search engines most? Those who receive thetraffic from searches. Simple.
Who should pay for that traffic?Those who gain that traffic. Simple.
How do you charge them?Ah! Now things get more complex. Goto.com was the first to introduce the novel idea of charging businesses for traffic generation directly with "Keyword Bids"starting at a penny per click-through.
Now companies began tobid for top positions knowing that being at the top of the listwas worth more traffic than being further down the page. Reaction to the CPC or cost per click model in 1998 was nearlyunanimous from the web community, especially while banneradvertising revenues were still a viable business model forsearch engines.
It was, "You can't charge for search listings!It'll never fly!" "Searchers won't trust the listings theyreceive on a pay-per-click basis because they are now'tainted' with commercial results!" At that time, in 1998,nobody believed first, that people would pay for traffic andsecond, that searchers would trust paid listings.It very quickly became apparent after the decline in revenuefrom banner advertising in 2000 and the dismal performanceof banners in delivering traffic that pay-per-click wasactually going to work for GoTo. At that point several newpay for performance models were adopted by start-up PPCsearch engines, and being first to market with the idea,GoTo dominated the crowd.It was then that the 900 pound gorilla, Yahoo stunned theweb with a $199 charge for a review of a commercial website.
Wait, not $199 to be listed, but $199 to be LOOKEDAT by a reviewer. It was still not a guarantee of inclusionin the directory! Search engines started thinking aboutthat and realized that Yahoo had the clout to demand moneyto be reviewed, not listed, but reviewed.
While the major search engines stewed on the dramaticmove by Yahoo, they quickly realized that demanding moneyto be reviewed would not work for them because they activelysought out sites by sending "spiders" out to "crawl" the weband index pages. Search engines wanted to be exhaustive intheir coverage of the web and catalog the entire thing, notjust the good sites, but ALL of them!When Google surpassed the 1 billion page mark they tootedloudly that they had indexed more of the web than anyoneelse.
This was seen as a milestone in search history andbecame the goal of many of the top search engines. Let'sindex the entire web! That prospect becomes very expensivefor search companies and someone has to pay for it.
But how?We can't all become pay-per-click engines if we want to indexALL the web, because only a limited number will pay to belisted. So they all stewed about it some more.Meanwhile, several other directories followed the lead ofYahoo and began to charge to be listed.
It became acceptedat multiple directory sites, notably at LookSmart and NBCi.Several special interest and topical directories had beencharging for listings longer, but directories that listedeveryone had a harder time justifying those charges. Yahoocan do it becuase the entire world knows of Yahoo and wantsto be seen there.
Vertical portals can charge because theydraw a very targeted searcher seeking specific businesses.It's worth paying for that targeted traffic.When the goal is to index the entire web and results are farless relevant and traffic less likely to result in sales tothe listed sites, how do you charge sites to be listed? Hmmmm.The search engines said, "We've been getting complaints abouta couple of things from sites seeking listings, one that theysubmit and never get listed, and two that when they are listedit is only months later that they begin to benefit fromdelivered search engine traffic." AHA! An opportunity presentsitself to charge money to someone for listings! Bingo! Paid inclusion is launched at Inktomi and becomes aninstant success with those who have been frustrated by slowlisting times and especially with those that can't seem to belisted at all at important engines. Here is a way to getlisted and get listed sooner, I'll pay for that! But how much?And are there any benefits above the free submission to enticethe reluctant web business into paying for what, until now hasbeen free.
We'll guarantee, not only that you'll be listed,but quickly, and to sweeten the pot, we'll recrawl your siteon a weekly basis to guarantee fresh listings.Now it's time for everyone to leap into the new model andbegin more frequent crawls for preferred listees. Certainlythis will lead even further toward the commercialization ofthe web, which angers many but is the only solution tosupporting the increasingly expensive proposistion ofproviding complex search to millions and indexing adramatically larger web.Time to innovate if you expect to attract those paid inclusionlistings.
At Fast AllTheWeb, they've come up with an intra-search facility that site owners with under a specified numberof pages can install as a branded, hosted search for their ownsites as an additional benefit. A hosted and branded sitesearch will likely cost them very little more to implementfor paid inclusion customers, while increasing revenue forFast.
As Fast is a partner to the Lycos network, this paidinclusion not only comes with intrasearch for your site andregular site recrawls to keep search results fresh, but alsogets listings into the Lycos network as well. A further enhancement in the race to paid inclusion will beextra cost "partner" or "sponsor" links that turn up at thetop of the search results pages.
This may affect some searchpartners differently than others as some now use GoTo paidlistings as those "sponsor or partner" links. Certainly GoTowill fight to maintain current partners by making themselvesmore attractive to those search engines considering paidinclusion programs.Inktomi has the larger partner list to support their versionof paid inclusion and is more attractive for distribution andvisibility, but offers little in the way of "perks" for thevalue driven crowd.
Altavista offers their own version ofpaid inclusion, dividing the program into two separatecategories, one for small businesses and sites under 500pages and the other for the big boys of ebusiness with morethan 500 pages to index.Pricing is just now being determined by many search enginesmaking the paid inclusion move, but it ranges anywhere from$39 per page to be listed up to yearly pricing models whichcome with the additional benefits, such as the intra-searchoption from Fast, AllTheWeb.com.I recommend keeping an eye out for short term sign-up bonusesand perks as the paid inclusion model gains acceptance overthe next 6 months. Just as the pay-per-click model of searchtook some time to gain traction, so too will paid inclusion.Watch also for partnering changes in the near term as largernetworks battle to gain or maintain market share.
Some willbe more agressive than others so bargains and benefits willno doubt emerge within 6 to 8 months to build customer andbrand loyalty early in the race to paid inclusion dominance. Article Tags: Search Engines, Paid Inclusion, Search Engine Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com .