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The company will continue to maintain all of the properties as separately branded, distinct destinations. "I believe in a multi-brand strategy. Even though the content was quite similar, the entry points are quite different," said Berkowitz.
AJ takes over Interactive [webmasterworld.com]
However deeper into the article when the editor notes what Berkowitz views as the 50% goal of AJ, and what is the current reality of search volumes.
The Nielsen NetRatings Search Engine Ratings put Ask Jeeves in fifth place as a search destination, with an 8.5% market share. comScore Media Metrix Search Engine Ratings reports a much lower number, at 3.1%. Jeeves says that the combined companies will have about a 7% market share of the web search space.
and Berkowitz ends with
"My advertisers have paid me -- Google and DoubleClick have verified those numbers," said Berkowitz. "They accurately reflect the number of searches as tracked by DoubleClick or Google. Google's not going to pay me for things that aren't real."
AJ and its collective holdings, has a heck of a long way to go to get to 50% of the search traffic on the web, and do not think G, Y, or MSN will sit back and watch them try, don't get me wrong i think AJ will continue to grow, and as many suggested in the thread from MArch the acquisition of Interactive, was an excellant move, though they are still relegated at the moment to a minor position in % terms compared to G Y and MSN traffic throughput!
I might be wrong, but they only seem to be interested in a few online marketers, such as Orbitz and the YPs. Otherwise, the ads come from Google.
They have a first-rate service. It's just interesting to me that everyone is aggressively trying to build an ad network and AJ is just coasting along, allowing Google to do it for them.
There has been some talk that AJ's primary biz model is to be an attractive target for someone such as Microsoft to take over. When you dig down a bit, that makes some sense.
Don't get me wrong. That's entirely legit. These guys are serious players, but in an odd ball way.
They were offering many diferent ad types and placements and sales people had no idea of what they were selling. When I finally got a quote back from them they padded the keywords I targetted with junk and still asked a high CPM.
I hope they work it out - always pulling for the local folks.
With that type of relevance I hope it goes down to 0.50% of the market.
The only way I can get my site on there is to pay them. Teoma's submit your site link leads here [ask.ineedhits.com]!
"A love once new has now grown old"
What do you guys think of search box syndication? ISH owns the Maxonline ad network that has over 56 million unique users and 37% reach each month with over 1000 independent sites. Do you think Teoma search syndication to content sites is in the cards here? Long way from 7% to 50%.
Well, any search engine can do it and few do. Overture just shut down its program entirely that was about 5 years old and not promoted for a couple of years. Kanoodle doesn't do any more. There's a clue.
You'll get about 1 percent of the traffic into that search box. It's solid search traffic. The most anyone would pay for it, my sources tell me, is 2 cents search.
Great idea, and it doesn't pay anything...
That's because it's been over on my sites taking everything and anything, almost to the point of getting itself banned because of what it's asking for.
The upside to it is very good placement on practically every keyword phrase that I follow.
Now if I could just convert the 22 clickthroughs that they've sent me this month...
I was looking through the travel serps on Ask this evening and noticed that the small sites really seem to be holding their own against the directories. Not just talking about our own sites here - I spent a while hunting through travel serps and most of the searches brought up what I would be looking for and not a pile of directories.
If the fast indexing keeps up I might search there more often. ;)
It's called PFI.
Teoma indexes as the speed of sloth.
