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What would be the comparison between Internet Keywords and RealNames? Any comments would be appreciated.
Do you know how they are "supposed" to work? I'm curious.
RealNames has been discussed quite a bit [searchengineworld.com] in the past, and you will find very little (if any) positive feedback.
We ran into this conundrum with a client who had umpteen hundred affiliates, who were spamdexing the heck out of the engines. They wanted us to "put them ahead of all the affiiates" without changing their site at all, or cloaking so they could end their affiliate program! I suggested it would be easier if they told the affiliates they could not trade on the Brand name, and stick only to product/category optimization. "Oh, we can't do THAT to our affiliates..." Okay, you can't tell them how to promote, but you can actively try to put them out of business?? And, we can't change your pages, or cloak... Hmmm.. Good bye!
[edited for typos, I think...]
Just think of all those newbies to the net who use IE and type their search query in the URL address window!
Browser Based Searching [clickz.com]
Sometimes people enter words in a browser's address bar rather than formatted domain names. They might type "amazon" or "hotmail," failing to add ".com" or "www." Depending on the words entered, IE will help users navigate to a particular Web site with the aid of the RealNames system or provide answers from MSN Search.
Somehow I have a "Real Names" keyword that corresponds to my company name. It doesn't seem to do much.
Internet keywords are $300 a year per search phrase. The price goes down to $150 a year in quantity.
They will accept generic keyword searches, as long as they are not TOO generic.
For example, "auto sales California" may be accepted. "Auto sales" probably will not be accepted.
..that is worth exploring, if indeed they will accept them. I haven't found a string that would benefit any of my clients to this point.
A client got a pitch that said they would disallow his "product term" string, but he could buy "product term location" or "corporate name" and "corporate name location". A total waste of money, as the product term was narrow enough, and the chance of a global user actually knowing the location of a vendor is very small. Actually, if they knew the location,and the "product term", they could probably find it using any old engine. If they new the "corporate name" no one else would have the right to buy that Internet Keyword, nor could anyone legally optimize for it.
I really don't think people are going to input product and location strings into the location bar. I do see them using known branded corporate and product names, assuming that putting "product name" into the location bar will bring them to www.productname.com. Statmarket's latest survey (which I think is horribly misleading - and I've had to justify SE expenses far more often thanks to this report!) says this is already happening, more and more folks are finding sites by using "domain guessing", versus SE's. That makes sense if good product/corporate branding has already been done. It does not address the market that does not yet have any brand awaresness, which is where SE's are most useful.
But I could be wrong. This may be the "new thing" if SE's become totally irrelevant, and in the users mind - useless.
The only RealChange I see is that RealNames is using registrars and hosting companies to attempt a cross sell - relieving themselves of marketing costs. Internet Keywords and MS are merely trying to replace the search engines - IMHO - it is not going to happen.
