Lycos and Fast

News from Scandinavia...

[ulstrup]

Lycos has just bought Spray.com, who owns the largest Danish index. Spray has sites all over Europe and it looks like Lycos are putting their dime on this fast growing market...

The largest Scandinavian SE running under SOL (Scandinavia Online) has some time ago changed from AV results to FAST results.

So doing SEO in Europe, especially Scandinavia indeed includes FAST and Lycos...

[rcjordan]

For the first time in who-knows-when, I've got Lycos in the referrer logs (sounds like something that should itch, doesn't it?). Just a blip or two, mind you, but that's how the good news starts... anybody else seeing Lycos?

[engine]

Hi Ulstrup, your news is welcome.
I'd like to think the European side of things will start to move faster (no pun intended). Can you keep us informed?

[rencke]

The German company Lycos Europe bought Spray Network and their eight portals for 5,6 billion Swedish kroner, equal to about USD 590 million paid for in Lycos Europe stock. According to a joint statement to the press, this will give Lycos Europe a total of 8.5 million registered users, 19 million unique visitors and 1 billion pageviews per month.

Spray has portals in Denmark (www.spray.dk), Finland (www.spray.fi), France (www.spray.fr), Italy (www.spray.it), Norway (www.spray.no), Sweden (www.spray.se), Czech Republic (www.spray.cz) and Germany (www.spray.net). Spray will be a separate division managed by its current General Manager, Johan Ihrefeldt as executive vice president of Lycos Europe.

The former owners of Spray Network, Spray Ventures and Investor (a major Swedish investment company) have also invested 100 million Euros in Lycos Europe, so Swedish interests now own 29,3 percent of Lycos Europe, which has cash at hand for further expansion. The principal owners are Lycos Inc, German media company Bertelsman/Gruner, Spray Ventures, Investor and Christopher Mohn, president of Lycos Europe.

Not much doubt that this will make Lycos a major player in Europe.

[rencke]

Ulstrup:
There is a rumour that the Danish SE Jubii.dk is part of the Lycos/Spray deal. Can you confirm this, and if so, what are the likely ramifications?

[Mikkel Svendsen]

I can confirm that - Jubii is part of the deal. However, so far they have announced that they will continue the same way they have don so far with great succes even though Lycos have a competing engine in Denmark. Jubii is too big a brand in Denmark for them to try and mess with it ... is my guess. Jubii is the second best known brand in Denmark - only CocaCola is more well known. In a 3 month analysis about 81% of all danish Internet users visit Jubii. They are big :)

But I must still emphazise that the search engines running under Scandinavaia Online - SOL (Kvasir and Evreka) is the biggest if you look at Scandinavia as one - even including spray.

[rencke]

Thanks Mikkel and welcome to WMW. Please feel free to post at my European Forum at any time. Great things are being planned - a Pan-European effort to chart the whole European SE scene. Roll-out planned for mid-October.

> But I must still emphazise that the search engines running under Scandinavaia Online - SOL (Kvasir and Evreka) is the biggest if you look at Scandinavia as one - even including spray.

I thought so. Evreka seems to be neck to neck with AltaVista in Sweden according to MMXI and if I am not mistaken, you are actually manager of Kvasir.dk, so I guess this is straight from the horse's mouth, right?

Looking forward to meeting you in person in Stockholm Oct 26-27 and will have a zillion questions for you.

[Mikkel Svendsen]

Thanks. Yes, ok, I admit it, I am the Product Manager of Kvasir ... :) But I have a 3 year professional background in SEO (still doing some ...) so I still feel close connected to you guys :-)

We (Kvasir and Evreka) switched from AV to FAST in february so we don't use AV anymore.