Guaranteed Ranking at No 1

[tigger]

I have just had a client contact me relating to an offer from a company called Touch Plc, who are offering the purchase of keywords for use with MSN.co.uk. This purchase will guarantee a number one listing for a search under that term.

The site comes up as a featured site, an example is a search for directline, you will see the featured listing at the top for the company directline.co.uk. Also if you type the search term into the address bar (without www. or http) it will redirect to the directline site via msn. This also works with ba to britishairways.

The charge for this is £500 + vat then a service fee of £35 + vat per year.

Has anyone had any dealings with this company, as although quite expensive it does offer a number one position guaranteed.

[makemetop]

This looks a little like RealNames which I noticed MSN UK pulled about 4-5 weeks ago. Formerly these came up in the #1 position for keywords. Perhaps this is the MSN UK replacement. However I notice that MSN UK also offer placement [mediacentre.msn.co.uk] in their featured listings for keywords for £150 CPM. Would these come above or below this listing?

[tigger]

Considering this scheme is only £35 pa (excluding set up fee) I would have thought the MSN plan would be above it, but it's hard to find a definite answer.

If it was just a number one postion with MSN on the cards I don't know if it would be such a good deal, but with the confusion some people have using Se's/address bar the option to also have your keyword as a re-direct to your main site is a bonus. But is it worth £550??

[makemetop]

I've been trying to find some details on Touch Plc but can find nothing apart from some stuff about them starting local portals. Can you let us know if you find out any more about it Tigger? I'd like to ask them a few questions too.

Incidently, when I typed 'ba' in my browser bar I got sent to Boeing Aircraft - not BA. If this is the case, this appears to have the same problems as RealNames has here - in that UK RealNames would only divert to UK sites that had bought the name if the users browser was set to UK settings (most are not) - otherwise you got sent to the US user of the term. If this is the case - I doubt if it is worth it.

Same thing with typing in 'directline' - I got MSN US search results not MSN UK nor a redirect. I believe that most UK users would also get the same thing as few reset their default browser settings to UK from US.

[tigger]

sticky sent with telephone number on, try also "cheap flights".

If you contact them I would be very interested to hear your thoughts as my client is just about to part with his hard earned pennies and I'm still a bit unsure of the value of this.

[tigger]

Interesting when you compare the same service offered by Real Names. $50 annual registration fee and a usage surcharge of $0.50 per resolution above 50,000 resolutions.

Just a small saving!

[makemetop]

Tigger.

I've just spoken to Touch and MSN UK to find out more. See sticky mail.

[caine]

>"also if you type the search term into the address bar it will redirect to the directline site via msn"

I by mistake found MSN.co.uk, did this when i typed in a targeted keyword(s) or phrases containing this particulary keyword into the location bar of Internet Explorer, which redirected through msn.co.uk and then to my site.

I did not pay for this and generally have not advertised this, for many reasons. Does anyone have any idea's on how to capatilise on this without alerting MSN.co.uk and having them drop the site ?

As I am sure MSN would if they knew.