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One way or another, Overture's exclusion of their competition from their search results &, those results excluding Overture's competition on non pay per click search engines, will end.
This is nothing more than Overture attempting to ensure that their competition or, what could potentially become "real competition", is excluded from prime advertising space at major search engines & directories.
If Overture were not concerned about competitors, they would not have excluded pay per click search engines from their database. This is fine by the way. It's their business. But, when they start feeding results to other engines & directories & those feeds block out their competition, that we guarantee will lead to lawsuits. It's anti-competitive. It's search result, keyword/phrase manipulation in order to block competition, outside of Overture's own domain.
We started a petition started which seeks an end to these alliances should Overture choose to continue with it's attempted monopolization of the pay per click/pay for performance search engine industry. All kinds of legal things are getting started because of their practices regarding this.
Overture, it's great that you started this type of advertising. That does not give you the right to stomp on your competition through alliances which, allow your exclusionary anti-competitive behavior to continue & block out competition.
Competition is good. Not allowing your competition to compete, that's just ugly.
It won't stop us &, we hope it doesn't stop the other "little guys" who, are simply working hard & trying to make a living just like you.
I would appreciate feedback from all of you on this issue.
Are we seeing a pattern here that others do not?
Thank you.
Since I follow the "se" and seo related kw sets, I noticed Goto getting kicked out of many of the se's about a year ago. You'd think as the internets largest advertsing broker, they would be everywhere under certain kw sets. They are there - about rank 1000 at best.
Most of the se's play games with each others listings. Just last month there was a pretty rude listing showing as #1 for "google" on AllTheWeb. They cleaned it up after they heard about it, but that sort of thing happens very often. There were a couple of se's that would outright redirect traffic to their own home page on "yahoo.com".
Sorry, this is nothing really new. The only thing that is new, is that Overture is taking it to the logical progression wrt pay per click engines. I don't see any legal grounds to challenge them on their actions.
I think Kanoodle might have a chance. With high listings on Lycos and Alltheweb they might do well. If only alltheweb could get better traffic...thay sure are a good engine.
FindWhat has always been the distant 2nd runner up. I think they should change their color scheme. It doesn't seem professional to me.
I predict Altavista's new PPC listings with logos, additional links, etc. may prove to be a peek at new PPC functionality of the next year.
Of course, Altavista probably won't be the leader.
I'll say it again...
I can't wait until someone besides Overture gets some top listings on a major engine. It's bound to happen. Overture seems to be loosing it's ability to service customers and getting overun. There is room for a competitor.
If you are a decision maker at MSN or AOL or Yahoo, sitting in your chair reading this, I say to you:
Give another PPC engine a try. Bringing about healthy competition will be good for you too, especially if you are helping provide it. Check out FindWhat, Kanoodle, or Ah-ha. And don't dare lift your pen to sign exclusive deals. Make them earn your business every month.
with a near monopoly player like overture then bid prices are driven up because they are the only serious provider,
and as the SE/portals that show overture results are on some kind of revenue share they have nothing to gain by generating competition and possibly lower prices ... the only way they would gain is by running their own scheme and keeping all the money (if cost effective)
For example, if Overture gives 50% of the click revenue to AOL and Kanoodle comes in and offers 60%, we have leverage.
So this would help revenue for the search engine AND webmasters would have more leverage, because there is a choice of where they want to spend the money.
if so, all the evidence seems to point to the opposite...or is Google's growing dominance of the SE market not relevant for some reason?
I've heard this sort of guff for a while...it seems to assume that the only players in the search game are search engines, PPC companies, SEOs and webmasters
So leverage away...
so that search engines, PPC companies, SEOs and webmasters can benefit.
...and maybe consumers might see an ad for a product they want to buy every now and then
ESPECIALLY if competition is more prevalent
For example, if Overture gives 50% of the click revenue to AOL and Kanoodle comes in and offers 60%, we have leverage.
sorry who are we?? aol would only agree to the deal if it made them better off (60% of a low gross is less than 50% of a high gross), so ppc bids on kanoodle would need to increase: webmaster = loser not gainer
but where does the end user come into the equation...or is the assumption that the poor sods will use any old search results equally happily without caring how they are put together?
couldn't agree more, IMO this attitude is precisely why google went massive, some people are ignorant and naive but not all,
the ppc model must work for some, (unless they never do their accounts) but then the shopping channel etc also works
Yes, Google is wonderful, but even Google is running an "adwords" campaign.
Advertising is part of life. If you want to limit competition, and keep the money in the hands of the few, be my guest.
Competition encourages competitive pricing and challenges the advertisers to do a better job serving both their customers and their clients.
Why do you want to limit competition?
"Go to one of the search engines or directories where Overture's feeds are sent to. Type in "pay per click search engines". In those "sponsored listings" see any pay per click search engines listed??? Of course not. Do you know why?"
I don't know what you are talking about. I typed in the search phrase you suggested and found plenty of competitive sites. Am I missing something in your statements. For example the top 3 sites on Yahoo (as fed from Overture) were all sites that led to other sites in the Pay per click arena. Tried the same thing on Altavista and got the same three.
Doc
a) The search engines which adopt GoTo tend to be those in trouble. They do it as a short term cash grab... stupidly (IMHO) not recognising that by reducing the relevancy of their returns they are actually increasing the magnitude of their underlying problems. The result tends to be an acceleration in their decline.
b) People are not net illiterate for an infinite period. Eventually they tend to understand where they can get the most relevant returns (and it's not GoTo links!)... in much the same way as they find the best channels for themselves on TV.
c) As a consequence of (b) they generally see through 'sponsored (GoTo) listing' just like they see through banner ads.
This generalisation represents my view of search evolution with respect to PPC listings, and is one shared by quite a few others.
PPC may well be around for the foreseeable future, but I see a decline rather than an increase in it's role not too far down stream.
Let's hope I' right!
PS: This doesn't mean of course that the increase in net commercialism will decline... more that large commercial interests will seek to find other channels from which to dominate the web.
when a TV channel starts feeding me ads thinly disguised as programmes then I stop watching that channel...I don't do something unless there is something in it for me...make an entertaining programme and pack it with ads and sponsorship and I'm hooked...the same with SEs...I'm happy with advertising as long as it doesn't get in the way of what I'm doing
Gets 4 paid results
1 Yellow pages
1 News
10 additional on topic results from DB
He/she books room from the site that offered the best navigation and best rates and bookmarks that site for use in the future. Goes to Las Vegas and has a wonderful time. Only looses $250 in the casino.
He/she didn't care that the first 4 results were paid listings.
That AV had inserted Yellow pages and News.
Or that the results from the DB all used Las Vegas in the domain name [hyphenated and non-hyphenated].
Exactly! I wouldnt be suprised if many of the engines are using Goto as their test guinea pig before launching their own pay per click model. I for one would hate to see them go this route
Napolean and Mike, I hope that you are right. When I look at our traffic figures, we are still pulling good numbers from the non-commercial areas and I havent seen a decline or a big chunk being consumed by PPC listings.
But, Netscape, Hotbot, Lycos, Altavista and Excite amongst others all promote the pay per click listings as "products and services or "partner search results" and not "sponsored listings".
So, to the consumer, do they pick up that these listings have been bought or do they perceive them as being objective offerings?
Am I wrong in saying that most of the above majors when they first introduced Overtures listings made a point of communicating to the consumer that the listings were paid for? Have they conveniently dropped this?
Do they have a moral / relationship building obligation of informing consumers of whats paid for and displayed and whats not?
(edited by: pete at 4:40 pm (gmt) on Dec. 12, 2001)
(edited by: pete at 4:42 pm (gmt) on Dec. 12, 2001)
it's not difficult to do...at the moment it is easy to smokescreen the figures with the overall growth of web use...as in "we added 3 paid listings and our traffic went up by 5%" sounds good...it sounds less good to say "we added 3 paid listings and our market share went down by 3%"...however, it looks to this outsider like Google has the fastest growing business, and the others are mainly tring to wring more cash out of a falling/static user base
Think about the costs that are involved before they would make a profit. The number of customer service reps and relevancy editors needed to run a PPC/PFP is not small. Buying software from John Cokos or others is only the first step. They would have to hire and train staff to insure that the inhouse program was better, in terms of results presented to the surfer, than what they have now.
The SE / Dir have enough to worry about right now.
imho
