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For webmasters, e-marketers and e-merchants...

Three years from now, when we look back at these newsletters, I am sure we will be amazed by how much has changed. The competition among major search engines will invariably continue, as will the buy-outs, so that by the end of this struggle for supremacy, there may well be only two major search engines left standing.

If Microsoft plays its cards right, MSN will be one of them, with its search functionality integrated into a future Windows OS. The other search engine, will either rule over the pay-per-click industry, or be associated with some other major industry.

As of May 2003, the US search engine market is divided as follows:

Recent News:

• After Yahoo!'s latest acquisition, the company now owns: Inktomi, Overture, AltaVista, and AllTheWeb.
• MSN has begun creating its own in-house webcrawler to compete directly with Google's. MSN has announced that its release is planned for the spring of 2004.
• Read our articles in the Stay on top section to learn more about all of these changes, so that you can stay ahead of the game.

- Jason Campbell

Search Engine Navigator

Tips for pay-per-click bidding As you may know, Overture was recently bought by Yahoo! Due to the publicity generated by the deal, now is a good time to review some tips for bidding in pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns on Overture and Google AdWords. How does a pay-per-click search engine work? With a PPC search engine, you bid a certain amount for your chosen keyphrase. Whenever someone searches for that keyphrase, and clicks on your web site's link under it in the search result, you pay the bid amount (or less, depending on your competition). Generally, the higher you bid, the higher your placement is in the search results. Overture Overture was the biggest PPC search engine before Google AdWords came along. Now they are both fighting for the top spot, leaving the rest of the pack in their wake. Overture works on a strict auction model: the higher you bid, the higher your position is. Overture's results are included in the sponsored results at the top of Yahoo!, MSN, Lycos, HotBot, and others. They claim to reach over 80% of all Internet users. Google AdWords Google's AdWords program started in February 2002, and quickly became Overture's only serious competitor. Google's system is different from Overture's in that the bidding is only one part of the ranking equation. The other part is the click-through rate (how often people click on your ad). Google AdWords are found on AOL, Netscape, Ask Jeeves, Teoma, Earthlink, and, of course, Google. Google states that their AdWords appear 200 million times a day. I figure that they also reach about 70% of all Internet users. Other PPC search engines: There are hundreds of PPC search engines out there, but you really only need to advertise with the top two. If you want to see some lists, you can go to www.PayPerClickSearchEngines.com Pay-per-click tips Here are some tips for running a PPC campaign: The #1 rank is not always the best. In fact, you can usually get a better return on investment (ROI) by being the second or third result in a search. The reason is that people will often click on the first result without thinking. They then realize that the site does not offer what they want, and they will come back and think (and read the description) before clicking on the second or third results. I mention only the second and third results because usually, only the top three results get published (Yahoo, MSN, and many more). Often the second and third results are much less expensive than the number one spot. Bid on as many relevant, highly specific, low cost keyphrases as you can afford. A keyphrase with only one or two keywords will usually cost much more than one with three or four words. Longer keyphrases also tend to be more targeted (for example, shiny blue widgets, instead of just plain old widgets). Thus, with longer keyphrases, you get lower costs and a higher return on investment. If you bid on enough of these targeted keyphrases, you can usually generate enough traffic to match what you would receive for a single-word keyphrase. To summarize, bidding on shiny blue widgets, pre-owned utility widgets, and zebra-stripped widgets, will cumulatively generate the same amount traffic as just bidding on widgets, but with a higher ROI because they cost less per click. Include your keyphrases in your title and descriptions. Think hard about your description because generally, the best description gets the most traffic (not always the highest ranking result). Use objective, not subjective language in your descriptions. Subjective descriptions will state how great the web site is. Objective descriptions are ones that list the benefits of a web site, or mention what the surfer can expect to find. Try to point out what is unique about your web site. Create highly relevant landing pages for your PPC campaign. These landing pages (where the PPC link goes) are what will convert a surfer into a buyer. You have already paid for the surfer to see this page, so use your resources to make it into a good conversion page. Also, keep separate, track of buyers that arrive via your PPC campaign, and buyers that arrive via other means. That way, you can track your ROI, and figure out how much you should spend on the PPC engines. Other helpful resources: Overture now boast 95,000 advertisers, just shy of Google's reported 100,000 - InternetNews - July 23, 2003 Overture unveils new ad features - Net Imperative - August 15, 2003 Overture Advertiser center - on the Overture web site Google Advertising - on the Google web site Shawn Campbell is the co-founder and Chief Search Engine Optimizer at Red Carpet Web Promotion, Inc.

Stay on Top Each month we review articles from leading industry magazines and newsletters. The following articles are the most interesting out of all the articles that were reviewed in the last two months. Click on the links below to read the full articles. Notes from the Front - Search Engine War Heats Up http://www.isedb.com/news/index.php?t=reviews&id=382 ISEDB.com - August 15, 2003 - "Google outflanked Overture (owned by Yahoo) in the European theatre by striking a deal with one of Europe's largest Internet Service Provides, T-Online. Supporting over 12.7 million subscribers… The loss of the European IT powerhouse will hit Overture where it hurts thus devaluing Yahoo's expensive acquisition." Link Building for Top Search Engine Placement http://www.searchengineguide.com/dunn/2003/0804_rd1.html Search Engine Guide - August 4, 2003 - "With these practices put in place your link-building efforts, while time-consuming, will be well worth the effort. As mentioned above, however, link-building, like META tags, are not the end-all and be-all of attaining top search engine placement. First you will have to build a marketable and optimized web site that provides your visitors valuable content for the search terms they are entering. Link building is the icing. Without the cake it amounts to nothing." Gulp! Yahoo and Overture Are Only The Beginning http://www.business2.com/articles/mag/0,1640,50847,00.html Business 2.0 - August 2003 - The tech industry is poised for a major eat-or-be-eaten phase. Who dines, and who's bait? The answers will reshape the IT landscape -- and dictate much about the future of jobs and investment. Will Yahoo Hold On To AltaVista? http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,112016,00.asp IDG News Service - August 14, 2003 - Yahoo says that the AltaVista brand and web site may survive once it completes its acquisition of Overture (which owns AltaVista). "FAST has traditionally been very strong in the basic science of crawling and indexing; AltaVista has been pretty strong in different needs and features of search, such as multimedia search and clustering search; while Inktomi has done a good job focusing on relevance, according to Hoang." SEO: Search Engine Optimists? http://www.clickz.com/sales/traffic/article.php/2228031 Clickz - June 27, 2003 - Not every conversion needs to be a transaction, however. I've previously described the difference between macroactions (overall goals) and microactions (all the actions a visitor needs to take to achieve a macroaction). Not every visitor is in the same phase of the buying process; so what phase the person is in determines the different "conversion" metrics we define. Shoppers Demand Decent Design http://cyberatlas.internet.com/markets/retailing/article/0,,6061_2224101,00.html Cyber Atlas - June 18, 2003 - "As our survey shows, there are substantial financial consequences when a company does not pay enough attention to the usability and information design of its web site." Study: Teens Use Net More Than TV http://www.internetnews.com/IAR/article.php/2240141 InternetNews - July 24, 2003 - Teens spend more time online than watching television, meaning marketers looking to reach this lucrative demographic need to reorient their media spending to better reflect young adults' habits, according to a study commissioned by Yahoo! and ad agency Carat North America. Are You Sabotaging Your Site's Visibility in Search Engines? http://www.searchengineguide.com/kalena/2003/0821_kj1.html SearchEngineGuide - August 21, 2003 - The majority (59 percent) of New Zealand's Top 100 Companies use little or no body text on their home page. Are you using plenty of text on your pages for search engines to index? Microsoft brains go head-to-head with Google http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/webservices/0,39020378,2137257,00.htm ZDNet Australia - July 9, 2003 - Microsoft has hired top scientists in a quest for search algorithms that will allow it to compete directly with Google.

Announcements "Ads by Google" If you have been wondering why Google ad boxes have been appearing on so many web sites lately, it's basically because Google is paying for it. It is a Google service called AdSense. In short, when a site signs up for AdSense, Google determines what the main keywords are, then displays Google AdWords on the site and pays the webmaster a portion of the click-through fees that are generated. See more on Google AdSense. MSN advances release date of new search engine to spring 2004 MSN's announcement to advance the release date of its new search engine will hurt Overture and Looksmart. Over 25% of Overture's annual revenues come from placing sponsored listings on MSN and LookSmart depends on MSN for almost 50% of its annual revenues by providing its directory listings in MSN's results. See this article for more details: http://www.isedb.com/news/index.php?t=reviews&id=398 Search is hot! Recent reports by Jupiter Research and US Bancorp Piper Jaffray show search marketing will continue to be the hottest segment of online marketing into 2004. See http://www.internetnews.com/IAR/article.php/3066561 for details.

Letters to the Editor Send your questions and comments for our next issue to news@redcarpetweb.com. Be as specific or general as you want -- other subscribers are probably wondering the same things you are. You should also let us know of any promotions, sales or new products on your web site.

Next Issue - New feature article - More on how Search Engines work - Stay on top: Articles from industry newsletters and magazines - And more... To subscribe to the Promotion Press, go to the subscribe page and fill in your email address. To unsubscribe from the Promotion Press, go to our unsubscribe page and fill in the address you subscribed with. This Newsletter is produced and published by Red Carpet Web Promotion, Inc. © 2000-2003