Focus On Abrexa, Toxic Lemon & Limey Search Directory

Traffic is growing, so here is some background info

[IanTurner]

For some time many of us have treated the Abrexa properties as somewhat of a bit part player in the UK search engine market place, but is this really true?

Having seen some of my stats, Toxic Lemon and Abrexa can now outstrip Lycos and Mirago in terms of referrals. So I thought I'd try and get some background and asked a few questions.

Search Numbers

Toxic Lemon 60K/day
Abrexa 40K/day
LimeySearch 8K/day

Search Provision

Toxic Lemon - Infospace + Limey Search Directory
Abrexa - UK Search ESpotting + UK Filtered Fast + Limey Search Directory
Limey Search - Limey Search Directory + ESpotting

There are three other properties in the group, all use the Limey Search directory, but none has yet achieved significant levels of traffic. These are listed below together with their search provision.

eibon.co.uk (Espotting + Fast results)
yithian.co.uk (Espotting + Inktomi)
wahooma.co.uk (Mirago)

The Limey Search Directory was originally built from UK ODP listings, with effort being put in to identify and include those UK sites which were not under the UK section of ODP. The directory has now diverged significantly from the ODP and has a PFI option, costs are £9.95 for commercial sites and £3.95 for non-commercial sites. At the moment this is a one-time payment which represents genuine value if the growth of the sites continues apace.

[webdiversity]

Abrexa and Limey are from the same camp, we were involved in newsgroups discussions at the time they launched.

Certainly the conversions have been good for Abrexa for our clients.

[Shak]

Have always been impressed with the quality of their traffic since the 1st visit came.

Glad to see that they are playing it wide and far, and not limited to 1 provider.

Shak

[Perplexed]

I cant say that I can find any reference to any of them in my stats but if they are "up and coming" then I am going to be "up and going" to have a look at them.

Thanks for the thought

[tosspot17]

I think we might give it a go too. We've seen a drop in traffic overall during August and could do with a small boost.

I'll let you all know how it goes. ;)

[Dayo_UK]

I have noticed referrals from Abrexa, Toxic Lemon and Limey Search and now Wahooma (not noticed the other ones yet that Ian mentioned) on a number of sites that I am involved in.

My opinion of this group of directories is that they do not have their own traffic and are just a stop off from Searchers from Google (mainly) on their way to the correct serp.

OK - cant post specifics but if you did a search on the term Widgets in Google - you may well find that one of the above directories is in the serps - click on that result and you get a search result page with backfill from other engines (as per Ian above) and therefore you may get traffic on an onward referral basis.

If you also look at the result page on these engines you will notice the similar/popular searches section - more pages linked to that can enter the other search engines results.

My conclusion is that the major reason that I am seeing referrals from these engines is that there Search Results Pages are appearing well in the Google Serps.

BTW - UK250 does the same thing - linking to their own serps to enter other search engine indexes.

<edit>
Clarifying</edit>

[edited by: Dayo_UK at 12:08 pm (utc) on Aug. 12, 2003]

[Dayo_UK]

Looking a bit more at this Abrexa seem to have moved away from this tactic.

But if you do an allinurl search on Toxic Lemon you can see the 40,000+ Toxic Lemon Serps that have entered the Google index.

Please advise me if you do not think this is Spam ;)

[Bobby_Davro]

Hey, don't knock it. We need as many new players as possible to stop the Google/Yahoo/MSN monopoly ;-)

The UK has a great range of smaller engines, most of which should be encouraged. I think that the size of the UK web helps - it is far more manageable in size than the USA for example.

[webdiversity]

I'm with BD on that one.

Ultimately it's about volume and quality and although Abrexa may not deliver the same volume as others it converts well into sales and that's the bottom line.

I'm sure the more of sites like that appear the less of a reliance on the big 4 we will all have, the healthier the model becomes.

Right now there are entire businesses whose entire existence hinges on some tenuous links in Google......

[Dayo_UK]

OK, Fair enough.

I was just interested in peoples comment regarding how I see there traffic.

Had a little play on Abrexa and it does fit nicely together as do all the directories in the group - perhaps I was being to hasty in my comments above as directory listing in normal search engine serps can be useful and more targetted than the original serp due to more human input.

Agreed the more alternative out there the better ;)

[Michael Anthony]

Ian Turner - can u clarify your info for me please? My stats show reasonable referrals from Toxic Lemon, on the basis of which I'd be happy to put my £9.95 into their pot.

Do I need to submit to Limey in order to achieve a listing on Toxic Lemon?

[Bobby_Davro]

Paying to get into Limey Search will only get you into the directory part of Toxic Lemon, which isn't the default search; Infospace provides the main meta search results. However, the directory does get some use, and Limey Search is also used on Abrexa and the other sites in the group.