Who is the Daddy of 3rd Tier Engines?

[christopher]

Hi everyone,

These 3rd Tier engines. Which is the most popular?

Cos I looked in <snip> and they move up and down like a yo yo so much that how can one tell, who is best and who isn't.

Is there another rating site for 3rd and 2nd tiers, or don't it work like that.

Trying the directory directories isn't much help either.

[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 4:23 pm (utc) on April 3, 2004]
[edit reason] please no urls and certainly no unlinked urls [/edit]

[Bobby_Davro]

Anything outside the top ten is subject to all kinds of fluctuations. The recent Google clean up and Yahoo swap have dramatically altered the UK scene. A good number of the better known sites that depended on Google for a lot of traffic have disappeared down the charts. However, they have just been replaced with a bunch of copycat sites, some so similar that there have been complaints of site duplication.

You should expect these search engines to be dealt with in the very near future as well - I believe that Google may be doing regular sweeps now to keep on top of it.

Since Google has decided that it is a spam technique to make lots of pages consisting of search results, this will also up the number of spam complaints.

In other words, expect big fluctuations in the near future again.

[IanTurner]

Given that many of these sites are automatically generated, if they were built right in the first place it doesn't take much to create a new template, apply a new style and set the site up on a new domain.

My guess is we're going to see this - guess the name of the top PPC affiliate engine this month game - for some months to come.

It could even become Google's VietNam

[christopher]

All sounds a bit serious to me. It's the copycat sites that worry me.

I believe they are created to 'make money' and not provide any genuine service other than to duplicate say Googles results etc - to make cash from the advertising.

If Google or other engines were to supply/authorise the results, then how can they possibly prevent these copycats from operating?

The web is a medium open to everyone. How the heck can you monitor something so vast.

[Bobby_Davro]

How the heck can you monitor something so vast.

Hire an editor and check which sites are appearing inappropriately in the top 1000 searches.

OR, automatically check the top 100,000 searches every week and look for sites that appear across a range of categories/topics and for a large number of search phrases.

Both would flag these sites very quickly. The UK market is small, and it doesn't take much to spot them. I could list most of them here and now. Remember that the goal of the sites is to appear in as many SERPs as possible, so they very quickly become obvious to anyone who does a lot of general searching.

I don't believe that the issue is that they are template driven - the newer sites are done by different people trying to cash in by copying others. I know of two sites that have been "dealt with" in one way or another for just that.

[IanTurner]

I believe they are created to 'make money' and not provide any genuine service other than to duplicate say Googles results etc - to make cash from the advertising.

I'm totally shocked at the mere thought that anyone would even contemplate such an activity.

[Bobby_Davro]

I hope that I never meet one of these people who are just using the Internet to make money.

[christopher]

But building a site just to duplicate results, and profit from that, could be possible.

I mean look at the many e-book and info product scams that are still operating. They have operated for years yet no one seems too concerned that innocent people are being ripped off.

So why not do this, except with Search Engines..

You see where I'm going with this line of thought.

It's legal. Not an obvious type of scam. Yet once they have your cash for paid entry or whatever, they could run off with it.

It's still legal - cos they've supplied something in return for the cash.

So it wouldn't end up in Court.

I really think people are very gullible sometimes. And I don't blame them - clever sales pitches can be set up, genuine appearance of quality service can be created.

Give me £1000 and I could set something up! Yes it's that easy.

I really think something is going on.

Something just smells fishy. I'm sure the top 20 SE's are fine - but what about the rest.

I mean who are these people? You go to a SE, oops, not contact details.

hmmmm Why would you set up a site to take a load of cash - then hide from discovery?

[Bobby_Davro]

Damn, you are right, it is starting to smell fishy. Some of these sites carry pure pay-per-click results, rather than crawler based results. That might suggest that they are aiming to cream as much cash as they can from visitors, rather than provide quality search results. I wonder whether the PPC companies such as Espotting and Overture know what is going on here? Surely they wouldn't let it continue if they realised?

LOL

And I don't think that the top 20 are safe - perhaps the top 9.

[jmccormac]

My guess is we're going to see this - guess the name of the top PPC affiliate engine this month game - for some months to come.

Google could take immediate action by analysing the links in these SERP generated pages for the obvious parts of the URL. It is not that difficult to write a filter for these sites. The PPC battle will get very dirty over the next few months and it is possible to imagine a PPC death penalty if Google is pushed too far by SERP spammers.

Regards...jmcc

[ncw164x]

>>I mean who are these people? You go to a SE, oops, not contact details.

They are the descendants of pond scum, the green slime what floats on the top of stagnant water.

>>I really think people are very gullible sometimes

I know what you mean

ncw164x

[christopher]

Just had a look at the engines chart, and we have 197 of em.

Woe. including 47 UK ones.......

[edited by: IanTurner at 2:25 pm (utc) on April 3, 2004]
[edit reason] no naming names thank you [/edit]

[christopher]

People are in the SE game to make money. But it's the poor old user/customer that loses out at the end.

I remember Looksmart charging I think it was 150ish per year, and doing very nicely. They were a brand, good results, tons of users, nice looking, etc etc - then they changed to PPC. Oops.

Ouch that hurt....

I read somewhere they went to court, then had to refund 9'000'000!

Yikes!

Now, why would a slick operator like LookSmart take such a gamble?

Greed possibly?

But if you've spent years building something useful and that has such respect - why wreck it? It don't make sense.

I know it's been bought out and potentially saved perhaps, but still.

[jmccormac]

Most SEs are operated with the intent of generating a profit. Traditionally SEs generated revenue by either creating a portal like operation to sell advertising on or by selling searches in bulk. PPC was very much an interim stage as it fell somewhere between the loss making SEs and context related advertising on SERPS. The launch of context related advertising really put the knife into PPC as it was more targeted. Looksmart had a pay for inclusion (PFI) scheme initially from what I recall. But the competition from bigger SEs didn't appear to give it much of a choice. The main problem with Looksmart was that it appeared to have no strategy. It appeared to be a bunch of guys who had struck lucky once. If you look at the development of Google for example, you can see product diversification, growing markets and growing revenues. Looksmart had none of those things - apart from the insane Grub deal it seems to have concentrated on the diminishing market for its PPC product. Losing key clients was also a major problem. There is something called the 80:20 rule in business where 80% of your revenues can come from 20% of customers. Looksmart seemed to be badly hit on this one. As for the Grub deal - don't make me laugh. It was a Hail Mary shot that failed. The key to any SEs success apart from good results is traffic.

Third Tier national search engines are different to Third Tier global SEs. Logically the third tier SEs in the UK would be far more locally orientated, operating in specific geographical areas. I would also exclude affiliates and SERP directories. This would probably reduce the field somewhat. At a guess there is probably deep blue water between the Tier 2 SEs and the Tier 3 SEs. The key difference is probably that the Tier 2 SEs are fulltime businesses whereas the Tier 3 SEs are parts of other businesses.

Regards...jmcc

[christopher]

Ah. So, do you think that people will go for Regional/local type engines/directories, instead of say General ones like Google?

More local search kind of thing - instead of wading through lots of unrelated world results kind of thing.

But users will still keep a general SE, for a 'hunting' machine maybe.

[jmccormac]

Yep there is a split emerging between the macro-search represented by Google et al and the more localised (micro-search) search engines/directories with more highly geographically targeted data/SERPs. Google is trying to get into the local scene but it is getting into it in the same simplistic academic way that it came up with PR. People do not think in postcodes and this is why . And local input is what makes a local directory superior to the macro search engines. It would require a lot of work but it is possible to defeat the big engines on local search.

Regards...jmcc