This Issue's Focus:
1. What Does $800 Million Buy You?
2. Optimized Positioning Strategies
3. Paid Positioning Comes of Age
4. Google Now Lists PDFs
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1. What does $800 Million buy you?
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That’s reportedly what Disney spent transitioning the once popular search engine, InfoSeek.com, into the soon to be defunct Entertainment Portal / Search Engine known as Go.com. It was not spent overnight, mind you; it took them the better part of year to turn this once profitable search engine into a losing proposition with the investment of almost one billion dollars.
At the end of February, Disney will shut the doors of Go.com. They are currently attempting to sell some of the more valuable assets, including the powerful search and indexing engine behind InfoSeek.
What went wrong is pure speculation on my part. But, if you take a look at a profitable search engine like Yahoo and see that while it continues to expand its interactive and content offerings, Yahoo’s products have always remained focused and tightly geared towards the interests of the viewer on each particular page. Similarly, Alta Vista recently revamped it’s portal (once again) to be more streamlined and focused, appearing primarily as a search tool.
Disney, on the other hand, changed the focus of InfoSeek from a search tool, to an entertainment destination, with search and other features on the side. Viewers obviously did not respond well to this mixed and diluted message.
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2. Optimized Positioning Strategies
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Although several of our core competencies remain with the strategy development and design of top-notch web sites, our other primary mission at SPIDERtel is to offer superior marketing services for clients both on and off the web. And, without a doubt, search engine positioning continues to be a primary tool for effective targeted advertising on the net.
As the search engines evolve their offerings, so too does ours. With the recent major announcement of Yahoo’s entry into the world of paid positioning (see below), we have fine-tuned our optimization services as follows:
Paid Inclusion and Positioning Program
This is a monthly service whereby we fully manage the status and, in many cases, even the positioning of your web site in the major engines against key word phrases. We help identify the key words and regularly monitor the status of your links as they appear on the search engines. The list of search engines we manage through this program are: AOL, Alta Vista, Ask Jeeves, Direct Hit, Google, GoTo, HotBot, Inktomi, iWon, Lycos, MSN, NBCi, Netscape and Yahoo.
Key Phrase Preparation
In order to be found throughout the engines, for hundreds of key phrase searches, it is essential that your web site be prepared so that the search engines can index it properly. We offer mass key word preparation to maximize your opportunity to be found under a wide range of targeted searches. These techniques are an important supplement to the paid positioning program in that they apply to a much wider scope of search engines, in both depth and breadth. In other words, your site will be found on more search engines and for more key words searches. In addition, this preparation can have a significant impact on the positioning of your site for the Paid Inclusion and Positioning Program described above.
Directory Submissions
In order to be found at all within certain engines, your site must be reviewed and approved by actual human beings. Getting passed this review process is critical to being included in their database. We offer services to prepare and submit your site to human reviewed search engines, some of which charge fees for the evaluation. This is another essential element of being found and positioned properly and, in the case of Yahoo, is necessary to take advantage of their new paid positioning program. The reach of engines for this program includes: About, Looksmart, NBCi, Open Directory Project, and Yahoo.
To learn more about any of these services, email us at info@spidertel.com and we will contact you to discuss them in detail.
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3. Paid Positioning Comes of Age
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Yahoo announced this week that it is entering the world of paid positioning, bringing long overdue credibility to this new form of search engine positioning. Virtually all major search engines are now generating some form of income off their listings. In the case of Yahoo, provided your listing is already in their database within their “commercial” categories, you are able to pay for placement at the top of the page they appear on.
We have previously addressed the controversy over the issue of biased placement of what many viewers would consider to be objective listings of web sites. The reality of the situation is that without paid positioning most top placements in the search engines don’t just happen. They appear because of the time and resources devoted to by search engine placement specialists, either in-house or contracted. The most positive aspect of paid positioning is that web sites that pay for it must provide a valuable service to the viewers it serves or they will end up losing money. Paid positioning actually offers a level of confidence to the viewer that the sites listed are those most interested in meeting their needs.
My best guess is that Yahoo will both restructure and expand this program over time. Web sites may only be better positioned within the one or two categories they are already listed within. Their position will only be enhanced on pages where categories are listed, as opposed to the pages which contain specific links. And, they offer no tracking of the click-throughs from these ads. Give them time, and we may see the ability of web sites to pay for positioning with specific key words.
Please see the article above for more information on how SPIDERtel can assist you in your positioning needs, or email us at info@spidertel.com.
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4. Google Now Lists PDFs
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Google is the first major search engine to include Adobe PDF files within its listings. PDF files, Adobe’s hugely popular Portable Document Format, allow anyone to save files in a format that all computers can display, provided you use Adobe’s free viewing software. Google has developed a method of indexing and categorizing the text within these documents and is now including them within their search results.
PDFs offer web marketers a cost-effective method of posting a large volume of information to their web sites without building additional web pages. While Google’s new capability does not give immediate calling to publish critical information in PDF format for purposes of being found in the search engines, it does suggest that it may be viable in the near future.
Imagine publishing beautifully formatted catalogue, brochure or other content pieces that clients and prospects download, print and view in the exact format you intended them to see. Not only is this an important supplement to the material you publish on your web site, it is also a powerful tool for carrying your message after someone logs off your web site.
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In Closing
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Flues, Colds, Ice and Snow all hit our area with a passion these past few weeks. So much for Global Warming and El Nino, looks like we’ve skipped all that are now headed into the ice age.
To break that monotony, what could be better than to stimulate those summer dormant, lazy days and lemonade sipping brain cells than to watch a hair raising hour of Survivor, or better yet, how about no-rules football, AKA the new XFL?. …. On second thought, perhaps you’re better off with curling up with a good book.
Good luck in all your marketing efforts!
