UKNM: Re: Search engines

[John McNamara]

To be pedantic, Excite is only charging for inclusion in its directory

(powered by Look Smart) rather than its search engine, which remains free.

Look Smart, which provides the directory resources for Alta Vista and MSN as

well as Excite, decided earlier this year to charge for commercial listings

in its directory, and each of its partners takes a share of the revenues

generated. As the excellent Searchenginewatch.com points out

(http://searchenginewatch.internet.com/sereport/00/08-looksmart.html), the

Look Smart charge is not 'pay for placement' nor even 'pay for inclusion',

but rather 'pay for consideration'.


One of my problems with the system of charging is that while Look Smart

claims to still offer free consideration to submissions from non-commercial

web sites, the criteria for a 'non-commercial' web site is restrictive:

submissions are only considered from organisations or agencies that are

registered, legally tax-exempt, nonprofit bodies that belong to one of a

specified range of groups. This excludes a whole raft of entertaining,

educative and hugely valuable web sites from enthusiasts and hobbyists, and

marks another stage in the 'professionalisation' of the Web. Now while this

may appear somewhat irrelevant to a mailing list of (mainly?) Web marketing

professionals, where it does impact (apart from increasing the budgets for

search engine submissions) is if the credibility and value of the Look Smart

directory - and the services offered by its partners (Excite, Alta Vista,

MSN) - are adversely affected. This probably boils down to whether the

general web user is sufficiently aware, and motivated, to alter their web

searching habits to directories and engines that do not charge for

inclusion. The evidence, based on the predominance of the IE browser default

home page MSN in the site traffic listings, is that they are not. Which is a

sorry development for those who believe in a free and open World Wide Web,

but probably a good thing for web marketers (?).


John McNamara

Content Editor

Red | Hot | Chilli

e:

jmcnamararedhotchilli [dot] com

t: 020 7614 8600

w: www.redhotchilli.com

The contents of this submission to UK Net Marketing are entirely the

personal views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of

Red Hot Chilli.



-----Original Message-----

Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2000 13:50:06 +0100

From:

leedjindex [dot] com

Subject: UKNM: Re: Search engines


hhmmm ..? excite are charging for entries.


http://www.excite.co.uk/info/add_url


Lee



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