Big Changes in the Search Industry, Doorway Page Bashing & a Slew of New Clients

Dear Friends,

The effects of the current economy have really been felt by the search engines over the past month or so. There have been a lot of changes, as a number of engines that haven't found alternate revenue streams have shut their doors (and others have raised their fees):

SEARCH ENGINE TRENDS

As I had warned last time, the declining advertising market is having a huge impact on the search engines. Many are turning to alternate revenue streams (read that as: they're finding more and different ways to charge us, the sites that are listed in them). Those that aren't are shutting their doors. Here's a status report on the biggest players. All of these changes have occurred during the past month or so.

• Overture (formerly GoTo.com) continues to gain ground as the 800-pound gorilla of the pay-per-click search engines. It serves up its top three or so listings to many of the big search engines - you'll find them listed under headings such as "Sponsored Links," "Partner Search Results" or "Featured Listings." In addition to the search engines Overture has been serving its results to (America Online, AltaVista, Lycos, Netscape and more), it also recently started serving up its results to Yahoo, Excite and WebCrawler. This means that any company (that's willing to pay per site visitor) can be visible on probably 80% of all searches within a matter of days. Note that Overture's partnership with Yahoo is probably limited in duration - rumor has it that Yahoo will launch its own pay-per-click system sometime this spring.
• Excite and WebCrawler's corporate parent, Excite@Home, is in bankruptcy, so this is why these engines are no longer relying on their own databases for results. All search results are pulled from Overture (not just the top three listings). If you're an Overture advertiser, this is good news for you. It's bad news to anyone who got good rankings by being in Excite/WebCrawler's database, advertisers on FindWhat (another pay-per-click engine that used to serve up their top three results to Excite), and searchers (who now have fewer options for running searches).
• Another long-standing search engine, Northern Light, shut down its public search engine just yesterday. It's still in business, but is now focusing only on supplying content and search to its enterprise customers.
• Currently, the only two crawler-based search engines that charge for inclusion are AltaVista and Inktomi (which supplies its database to About.com, America Online, HotBot, iWon, LookSmart, MSN, Overture and more). Both of them quietly raised their fees within the past month. It used to cost $420 to submit ten web pages to both engines (or $760 for 20 pages). Now it costs $564 for ten pages ($1,004 for 20). This is an increase of between 30-35%, depending upon the quantity. Other engines will likely adopt pricing models like this in order to survive.
• Yahoo has charged commercial sites for submission for over a year now. On December 28, 2001, they suddenly switched from charging a one-time $299 fee to charging this fee on an annual, recurring basis. The details about this annual renewal process - such as whether or not sites will be able to change their category or description - are not yet known. If your site was already in Yahoo's database before December 28, you are exempt from this new fee.

These price increases can be discouraging, especially for companies that set a budget for search engine marketing (there - I've used the new term!) and are then surprised by unanticipated charges. If there's a silver lining in all this, it is that by paying a fee, we move from being a necessary evil (in the engines' and directories' eyes) to being a customer. It used to be that a company would wait two or three months after submitting their site to Yahoo for the site to be included in Yahoo's database - often categorized improperly and with an inaccurate description written by one of their staff members. Now you're guaranteed that your site will be reviewed within seven business days. Yahoo still holds most of the cards, and errors still happen, but now at least there's an appeals process and Yahoo staff that you can contact directly.

And despite these fees, search engine marketing is still largely the least expensive and most effective way to drive targeted traffic to a web site. If your site isn't already in the databases of the search engines and directories, be sure to submit it soon, as more increases are likely. (And - forgive the plug - remember that submission alone is not enough - your site must be optimized first in order to rank high.)

SEARCH ENGINE TRENDS - TERMINOLOGY

My industry has decided to make a conscious move toward using the term "Search Engine Marketing" rather than "Search Engine Optimization." I fought this at first (largely due to the huge quantity of letterhead and business cards I have with "optimization" on them!), but have come around. "Search Engine Marketing" is more all-encompassing (after all, if you want to be literal about it, three out of my four services have nothing to do with "optimization"). It's also more familiar and friendly sounding to potential clients. So you'll notice me moving toward this new standard.

ARTICLES

I always like to forward links to related articles of interest. This time, I'm in a doorway page-bashing sort of mood. Many other search engine marketing providers use doorway pages (also known as "gateway pages") to get results. They can work, but there are serious drawbacks associated with using them. I've always said that if you know what you're doing, you don't have to resort to doorway pages. What are doorway pages and why are they a problem? I'll let the articles do the explaining:

• "Rethinking Your Doorway Page Strategy," by Robin Nobles
• "The Myth of Gateway Pages," by Jill Whalen
• "Locked Doorways?" by Andrew Gerhart

RESULTS

Congratulations to client ReCellular, Inc., the recipient of our best results to date. Less than a month after optimizing and submitting nine pages on their site, we had achieved 150 top rankings (as compared to 11 before), including 48 #1 rankings (as compared to 0 before).

NEW CLIENTS

There's never a dull moment here at Prominent Placement, Inc., as I'm fortunate to work with such a wide variety of clients. Please join me in welcoming:

• Thompson, Ventulett, Stainback & Associates, Inc., global leaders in master planning, architecture and interior design.
• Turner South, Turner Broadcasting System's cable network that celebrates the rich culture, quirky customs and genuine characters that make the South unique.
• Trasent, a call center that allows companies to outsource inbound and outbound telemarketing, lead generation, inside sales, customer care, and email marketing.
• Peachtree Hills Apartments, an historic apartment complex offering state-of-the-art telecommunications services and an unbeatable Buckhead location.
• The Music Class, music and movement for children ages birth through four years with their parents. (A sidenote: as an enthusiastic customer of The Music Class for over five years with my kids, I highly recommend it to any of you with little ones!)

PUBLICITY

I was asked to guest moderate the leading online discussion group for my industry in early January. The I-Search Discussion List has 20,000 paid subscribers. I enjoyed moderating for three weeks while the regular moderator took a break, and was asked to be I-Search's substitute on an ongoing basis. If you're interested in seeing any of "my" issues, let me know and I'll forward them to you.

Back in November, I spoke on "Obtaining High Search Engine Rankings for your Web Site" at a TIMA (The Interactive Media Alliance) meeting.

THAT'S ALL SHE WROTE

I appreciate your time and support. As always, if you have friends or colleagues that may be interested in having their web site placed more prominently in the search engines (leading to greater traffic and increased sales), please feel free to forward this message to them.

Best wishes for a happy, safe and prosperous 2002!

Stacy Williams