Brett_Tabke - 5:49 am on Sep 20, 2000 (gmt 0)

There has been a massive reduction in the number of searches performed via ink. From what I've heard, Ink was being paid on a 1 cent per search average. That has changed radically:

- yahoo no more.
- Hotbot gets some results straight from direct hit.
- Iwon now getting some from ask jeeves and reducing hits to ink.
- Msn getting most from itself, direct hit, various directories and reducing hits to ink.
- anzwers now focusing solely on .au domains - same with canada.com and .ca.
- AOL now pulling from goto and the ink slide will continue.
- meta search engines now being paid to run other search engines results. (from goto, find what, looksmart). No major ink outlet at major metacrawlers (again, exposure reduction).

Where is there a major search engine that is using pure Ink results? There isn't one that I can see left.

Aol and Iwon would be the closest, but AOL is going to Goto and I'm sure ink's cut will decrease by atleast 75% there - Iwon is pulling more and more from ask jeeves - they'll continue to do that since ask jeeves is paying them according to some reports I've read.

Ink has taken it in on the chin this year. I've tried to find the numbers from their own data, but all we can do is give it a best guess: I'd guess the number of searches performed via ink this year is off 90% from its high in January.

With all that, I'm sure Ink is shopping itself at a much cheaper rate than it used to (I've heard 10 searches to the penny or less)

Pay for spidering? No guarantee return? Not me at this time.