SearchDemon

any background information?

[IanTurner]

Has anyone got any background on this UK search portal.

Whose results are they using PPC? Backfill?

They are appearing in my logs a little more often recently.

However there is no contact info on the site, no terms of service or any background info at all for that matter.

<Disclaimer and About Us pages added 24/10/03>

[edited by: IanTurner at 7:23 pm (utc) on Oct. 24, 2003]

[max_rk]

Espotting and backfill inktomi

[Bobby_Davro]

I believe that it is a very close partnership between Espotting and an individual (possibly an employee?). All of the traffic is through Google SEO work.

[DaveN]

They also have Holidaydemon and Moneydemon, crosslinked and buying in PR heavily, SEO'ed in google by using sitemap and a keyword template.

it also looks like they are getting a lot of keyword data from someone or some company.

Personally I would never trust a site were you can't get in touch with the people who are running.

DaveN

[Bobby_Davro]

On the other hand, the site is clean and doesn't have any banners - so I like the style. I wish there were more sites like that :-)

[DaveN]

Bobby_Davro you aren't look hard enough there are 1000's of sites like that ;)

DaveN

[Bobby_Davro]

About 2000 just like that is my guess.

But seriously, Search Demon has very very quickly become a third tier player in the UK search engine market (in the top 15). Well done to him. I heard that the site was getting over 100K searches per day, which is good by any standards.

[IanTurner]

I like the style and layout however there are a number things that don't stand up to deep scrutiny such as the fact that sponsored results aren't higlighted as such - all the quality search portals now label their sponsored results and there is no information about where the results are coming from. Also the lack of any information about who the site owners are is really quite worrying.

Do we really want to see a proliferation of such sites?

[edited by: IanTurner at 2:59 pm (utc) on Oct. 23, 2003]

[DaveN]

Do we really want to see a proliferation of such sites?

I have never been one to try and stop people making a living that is the job for the big search engines ;)

DaveN

[steve40]

interesting stats 100k per day from stats thought they averaged 15,000 uniques so must be very loyal visitors

[DaveN]

thought they averaged 15,000 uniques

care to elaborate, where did you hear about there uniques from...

DaveN

[Bobby_Davro]

"Do we really want to see a proliferation of such sites?"

I merely meant more sites with less banner and pop-up advertising. I should have been clearer, sorry. I didn't mean that I wanted to see a proliferation of specialised Demon sites like CheeseDemon or FungalInfectionDemon.

The problem with labelling the sponsored lisings is that they are all sponsored listings for many searches. As with many Espotting (and Overture) affiliates, the site lists all of the PPC results first and then the backfill. I can't honestly see sites labelling every single one of their search results as a sponsored link; that's hardly the way to impress the ladies.

[Smiley]

29k on alexa... interesting.

Good luck SearchDemon.

[Bobby_Davro]

Don't forget that the traffic rank is averaged over the last 3 months. The traffic rank for the past week is in fact 8,949 - a LOT higher up.

[NFFC]

>that's hardly the way to impress the ladies

Agreed. Having said that its also being a little economical with the truth.

I have them at just over 7,000 uniques a day, I really hope that they are not getting over 100K searches per day from that small a base.

[steve40]

hi all
I do think we should take alexa stats with a pinch of salt ( to easy to manipulate ) but even if there are discrepencies on the stats search demon has made major inroads into the uk search market in a very short time and when you consider there were at least 5 similar sites
well done to them

[Bobby_Davro]

The 100K that I heard wasn't from Alexa. Everything that I see in that Alexa data suggests that 80-100K searches per day is about right when compared to my own sites. The "reach per million users" is very similar to Mirago for instance, which gets a number of searches in that region, I believe. Given the average number of page views at 1.4, that suggests around 50-70K visitors per day.

As mentioned before, this is not a hard core user base, this is clever SEO traffic. Over time, if people like the results, then it may build up a user base.

It is worth noting that the Alexa data isn't bad for the top 10,000 sites or so - it is useful for comparison data as long as you look at the averages rather than the day to day numbers.

[DaveN]

nice to see they added. Disclaimer ¦ About Us pages on searchdemon

DaveN

[edited by: DaveN at 9:05 am (utc) on Oct. 25, 2003]

[TinkyWinky]

As I've only seen recently in the SERPS - is this a case of the one / two month wonder?

Nice looking site, but there have been other entrants who appeared highly only to disappear within two months from the first 10 results (financesearcher, uknetguides etc.)

If they tidied up minor bits like the contact details and the "sponsored" status, they would definitely get better press.

Good luck I say.

[edited by: IanTurner at 8:33 pm (utc) on Oct. 24, 2003]
[edit reason] Against charter [/edit]