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I feel goto will need to take a lesson from excite, I don't know what it's like in basildon (other than wet) but just about every where you look in portsmouth there is an advert for excite.
I recently asked some of my friends to name some search engines all came up with yahoo then AV/Excite/lycos and as far as google went most of my friends had thought I had reveted back to my childhood :)
When it comes to paying, my money is still with yahoo all of my clients that have taken my advice and paid to get in have seen great traffic and in fact some have even made some money from their web sites :)
When Freeserve went over to INK UK filtered and before I got flushed out to sea there was a definate increase in enquiries - the using the ISP SE thing- hence if GoTo aint Stuck on the top of a Top 5 ISP, then its usefulness to UK searchers who possible aren't as sophicated as in the US, must surely be questionable.
I had thought of Yahoo Express submission but having not got back in, in 2 years (Dumped from the UK during a category reshuffle)I was concerned that I would Pay-up and still not get into it.
I've asked some of my friends about SEs and Directories and it comes back to the usual, as you say Tigger.
A portal like Freeserve switching to a different SE or search service could make a big diffrence. The average user does not really care about the search engines/directories, they just want a search button. If they get poor results they look around for another. What will they find? They will find Yahoo! Possibly Lycos (that doggy), Excite (the guy with the pen ink on his face, amongst others), and that's about it.
Goto means nothing to a searcher. They (goto) appear to have decided to provide the search facility to portals, as opposed to marketing themselves.
I just checked and was surprised not to see the goto search.
I'll be waiting a while before making a decision on goto.
how do you know if you're up agianst a paid GOTO listing, I know with freeserve they offer a "on freeserve" search first, is this where the paid listing will go?
Just checked all my listings with freeserve and so far nothing dropped YET.
Type in 'website promotion' and you will see what it looks like. I also typed in 'cybermarketing' which has no paid listings, but still got a return from UK Goto on the first page. It looks just like the normal Freeserve page apart from a 'provided by Goto' logo on the right and bid prices against the listings.
When Tradal isn't averaging down their USA bid, they are missing a good thing.
Looks like the players just don't understand PPC. Unreal!
imho
