Telstra to unveil search engine

[Brett_Tabke]

Continued from: [webmasterworld.com...]

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[news.com.au...]

TELSTRA Corp Ltd is set to unveil plans to revamp its Sensis business with a new, youth-focussed search engine.

Sensis – which owns the Yellow and White Pages telephone directory businesses – will announce its new Internet search engine at a briefing for analysts and media next Tuesday.

[bpresent]

D'oh - every page daily for the last 3 days (on a different site) - did not look close enough :) thanks

[aus_dave]

Off the top of your head - is the addition of a web site link free with the standard yellow pages listing?

There's not much you get for free from Sensis apart from the phone books themselves ;). I'm not sure how much they charge for an online web site listing but it is definitely not free.

[bts111]

Weblinks:

yellowpages.com.au
NSW and VIC = AUD $165.00 1 classification per annum

ALL OTHER STATES = AUD $110.00 1 classification per annum

citysearch.com.au
240.00 per annum, with a 6 month commitment. 3 classifications. This is for one state.

[Warren]

From [finance.news.com.au...]

Sensis released earnings

Revenue climbed to $1.36billion - up 11%. Without the Trading Post, up 7.6 percent.

"The search engine was unveiled today.

Facing an escalating price war in mobile phone market, Telstra hopes the search engine will create a competitive advantage and make the White and Yellow Pages more attractive to advertisers than rivals Google or Yahoo, and contribute to much needed growth."

A bit of a summary of business units:

Yellow Pages: Grew 4%
Yellow Pages online: Increased 63% with customers doubling to 35,000.
White Pags Online: 100,000 paying customers
Whereis and City Search: collectively grew 20%

Some nice growth numbers there!

[dodger]

Ok Sensis has their SE up, now when will it get any traffic?

[edit_g]

Ok Sensis has their SE up, now when will it get any traffic?

When you spend $11 million on advertising a search engine you'd have to be pretty far gone not to get any traffic. Traffic isn't the issue - will they provide quality?

[bpresent]

Whereis™ is currently undergoing an upgrade to our service.

[dodger]

Traffic isn't the issue - will they provide quality?

The $11M will be down the drain if people go there and find lousy results, because they won't go back.

[edit_g]

The $11M will be down the drain if people go there and find lousy results, because they won't go back.

That's the point I was making - but they need quality for both their audience and their bidsmart.com.au clients.

[dodger]

They should have ensured the quality was there before they went live with it Most people won't bother coming back no matter how many ads they have to suffer if they go there the first time and find rubbish as it is now.

[bpresent]

Rubbish is in the eye of the beholder.

Firstly, I don't watch TV so I don't know the thrust of the ads... but I'm assuming people will look to it as a cross between yellow pages and the web (if they don't, then perhaps that's the way Telstra should be plugging it - because that is where it appears to me the power lies).

I've done a few service / location related searches NOT using the 'In this location' feature and it looks pretty good.

I'm not saying it is good, but it looks good (just like VHS looked good all those years ago).

[Chris_D]

This has been one of the most amusing product releases in the history of a Telco - I mean an aspiring online search media player.

Firstly - they launch the 1234 service.

sensis®1234 is a new concierge voice service that will make finding information via the telephone easy - 24 hours a day, 7 days a week - no matter where you are in Australia*.....

Sensis has integrated the Telstra Call Connect (12456) service and the Yellow Pages® Connect (12451) service and launched a new, enhanced, operator assisted concierge service - sensis®1234**.

All calls to sensis®1234 are answered by an operator and callers are able to ask for a variety of information and be obtain connectedion to their requested service.

Except that Optus customers who dial 1234 will get the International Operator.... not the Telstra concierge voice service...... Thats nearly 35% of the Australian mobile market who'll see the signs on the backs of buses and get the wrong number....

[zdnet.com.au...]

Then - they launch the Sensis search engine today, after an extensive few weeks of public beta testing..... www.sensis.com

Now - try and find details on the Sensis 1234 service at the www.sensis.com search engine....

So - does this Telco grok the web? It spends $11 million dollars worth on advertising its own products - and those same products can't even be found in its own search engine?

Beware who you trust with your marketing dollars.........

[dodger]

sensis®1234 costs 40c to connect and 4c A SECOND to talk to the chatty operator who is soooo pleased to help.

5 minutes finding the right number?
That'll be $12.40 thanks very much.

I hope they lose the lot (I hate rip off Telcos, they're parasites)

[edit_g]

Then - they launch the Sensis search engine today, after an extensive few weeks of public beta testing..... www.sensis.com

Now - try and find details on the Sensis 1234 service at the www.sensis.com search engine....

Actually, try to find anything about search on sensis.com ;)

[bpresent]

Yes - they seem to launch an altogether different range of products :) Likely to be getting a fairly significant increase in traffic over the next few weeks.

[Chris_D]

Sensis Search general manager Greg Ellis said the search engine landscape was changing.

"You should judge all search providers on the relevance of their results, not on the volume," he told the several hundred analysts assembled a briefing yesterday.

Ok then - sensis search is absolute crap.

:)

[sidewinder]

Ugg! I wish they'd put this money into rolling out improved ADSL coverage.
A recent move has dropped me back to dialup.

Unless they start setting home pages of their customers with their install CD's etc, they won't take much. (eg NineMSN and IE)

[bpresent]

So..... anyone getting any traffic ;)

[dodger]

no - the only people who know about it is us.
If they think $11M in ads will get people away from Google thay've got a lesson to learn.

[edit_g]

Did anybody see the Hitwise newsletter this month? They had a feature article about how Sensis are doing well in aquiring the 18-24 share of the market and how they've moved to number 12 in the 'search engines and directories' category. I didn't know there were 12 search engines in Oz... ;)

[dodger]

Hitwise write good fiction

[edit_g]

Hitwise write good fiction

no - the only people who know about it is us

If I had to rely on some sort of traffic estimation service in Australia I'd rely on Hitwise. At least they've got data from the big ISP's. It's slightly better than plucking figures out of thin air and unsupported opinion, don't you think?

[dodger]

Try Red Sheriff - they actually audit sites to see what the real figures are.
I've seen Hitwise publish results on many occasions that I know are incorrect, many have complained about their MO.
I haven't taken any notice of them for a couple of years now.

[bpresent]

I didn't know there were 12 search engines in Oz...

Made me laugh - but then I got to thinking...

[webmasterworld.com...]

[albatross2147]

Telstra/Senseless can't even get their Whitepages search working properly. Try a residential search for any reasonably common name in any Sydney suburb and you will get "Unfortunately there are too many listings to display" even though there couldn't be all that many for eg. "smith" in Russell Lea (it is really an old established Sydney suburb). And their non-metro results are all over the place.

So imnsho there is no way they are going to get sensis.com.au searches right.