Espotting lands Web.de

[redlion]

Espotting are now providing results on web.de too - they are under "Partnerlinks" (eg if you search for cars). It looks like it's their top 3 results.

Has anyone heard anything official about this?

Another search engine partnership for Espotting - looks like they are sewing up the PPC market by focusing on national and international search engines like web.de, Yahoo etc.

Any ideas whos next?

[heini]

Nope nothing official yet, neither from Espotiing nor Web.de. Not surprising - both are rather publicity shy...

Now - Web.de is big. No. 3 of the portals here, bigger than Lycos.de.
So with Yahoo.de, Lycos.de, Fireball.de, Web.de Espotting has a huge reach in Germany.
And again they beat Overture...

[sudden]

I got an email yesterday from Espotting, making it official. Itīs also mentioned on espotting.de.

No hints on future partnerships. But, thinking about it, most of the big players in Germany now have a PPC program up and running - there arenīt many potential partners left I am aware of.

[heini]

Hello sudden - mentioned on Espotting: right, but still no press release or any information on web.de. Strange, but same behaviour as when they changed from Fast to Google.
I wonder anyhow how this will affect the referrals from web.de. It has been their strategy to put results from the directory first on regular searches. Now that those directory inclusions have gone paid completely, they are topped by 3 Espotting listings. Since the directory is very large on broad searchterms the user is unlikely to ever see any Google results.

What makes me wonder is why web.de made the change to Google. Because of the Espotting deal and their paid directory no adwords or sponsored links are displayed at web.de.
What has the incentive been for that change?