SEARCH ENGINES

Search Engines
According to industry research, almost ninety percent of all Internet surfers use search engines to find new websites. This means that search engines are critical to the success of your Internet marketing plan.  Most search engine consultants would have you believe that search engines are mysterious and very difficult to conquer. The truth of the matter is, they're not. In fact, just four search engines drive 80% of the traffic on the Web, and getting listed in these search engines is pretty easy.

For a search engine to bring traffic to your site, you must be listed in the first few search results of a search engine. In the early days of the Internet, you could write some fancy code and get your site listed at the top of many search engines. Today, the top three spots are usually reserved for companies that are willing to pay to be listed under various search phrases. After these first three "sponsored listings", most search engines provide a combination of search results pulled from other search engines. For example, Yahoo! now pulls its search results from Google. MSN pulls their search results from LookSmart, which is essentially an alphabetical directory of the Web sorted by topic.

The Most Popular Search Engines
According to Jupiter Media Metrix's ratings for 2002, the most popular search engines are:

    • Google (25%)
    • MSN (36%)
    • Yahoo! (33%)
    • AOL (22%)
    • Lycos (19%)
    • Ask Jeeves (16%)
    • LookSmart (10%)
    • InfoSpace (9%) (Includes DogPile & Metacrawler)
    • Overture (9%)
    • Netscape (8%)
    • AltaVista (6%)

ALTAVISTA
AltaVista Co., Palo Alto, CA
www.altavista.com
Search engine with its own crawler and directory content from LookSmart. AltaVista is consistently one of the largest search engines on the web, in terms of pages indexed.
PAID INCLUSION Express Inclusion (under 500 URLs): $39 for first URL, $29 each for URLs 2-10, $19 per URL thereafter. Automatic daily refreshes (weekdays only). Six-month basis. Trusted Feed (more than 500 URLs): Cost per click (CPC) basis, around 25 cents to 35 cents depending on category and URL volume. Weekly refreshes.
PAID PLACEMENT Sponsored links from Overture. The first link in the “Sponsored Matches” section is often sold by the AltaVista sales team on a cost per thousand (CPM) basis.

BUSINESS.COM
Business.com, Santa Monica, CA
www.business.com
B-to-B directory. Distributes search results to other sites such as Business Week, the Financial Times, Inc., Fast Company, CNET, Primedia publications and others.
PAID INCLUSION $99 a year for a basic company listing. Up to four additional links with each site submitted.
PAID PLACEMENT Offers featured placement of company description within business directory and search results on CPC basis by keyword. By rate card rather than bidding process. Rates start at 40 cents CPC.

DMOZ OPEN DIRECTORY PROJECT (ODP)
Netscape Communications Corp., Mountain View, CA
www.dmoz.org
Directory managed and compiled by volunteer editors. Owned by Netscape (and thus AOL Time Warner). Does not accept ads. Good to submit to because it provides directory listings to Google, AOL, Netscape, AskJeeves, HotBot, Lycos, AT&T Worldnet and hundreds of other specialty portals. Has stricter inclusion policies for merchant sites than the commercial directories.
PAID INCLUSION None.
PAID PLACEMENT None.

FAST
Fast Search and Transfer ASA, Oslo, Norway
U.S. headquarters, Wellesley, MA
www.fastsearch.com
Search technology. Powers Lycos. Also has a site for demonstrating its search technology, AlltheWeb.com.
PAID INCLUSION PartnerSite (fewer than 500 URLs): subscription basis, $34 per year for first URL, $16 thereafter. Guaranteed 48-hour refresh. PartnerSite Direct (more than 500 URLs): CPC basis, about 25 cents per click. Guaranteed 48-hour refresh.
PAID PLACEMENT None.

GOOGLE
Google, Mountain View, CA
www.google.com
The leading search engine. Google is a search engine that makes heavy use of link popularity as a primary way to rank web sites. This can be especially helpful in finding good sites in response to general searches such as "cars" and "travel," because users across the web have in essence voted for good sites by linking to them. Index updated every four weeks. Powers Web search at 130 sites, including Yahoo!, AOL, Netscape, EarthLink and AT&T Worldnet.
PAID INCLUSION None.
PAID PLACEMENT Premium Sponsorship (“sponsored links” at top of results page): CPM model; minimum spend: $10,000 over three months; syndication: premium sponsorships are not syndicated.
AdWords Select (“sponsored links” appear on right side of results page): CPC basis; auto bidding; startup cost: $5; minimum bid: 5 cents; minimum monthly spend: none; syndication: AdWords Select paid links also appear on other sites.

INKTOMI
Inktomi Corp., Foster City, CA
www.inktomi.com
Major crawler-based search technology used by other sites. No search site of its own. Pioneered pay for inclusion. Powers MSN, Overture, HotBot, many others.
PAID INCLUSION Search Submit (up to 1,000 URLs): $39 for first URL, $25 for each additional, per year. 48-hour refresh.
Index Connect (more than 1,000 URLs): Usually done with an XML Feed. CPC basis, based on subject matter. Refresh based on customer needs (can be less than 48 hours).
PAID PLACEMENT None.

LOOKSMART
LookSmart Ltd., San Francisco
www.looksmart.com
Pay-per-click directory. Has own search site (main results from own editors, secondary results from Inktomi). Powers others such as AltaVista, AskJeeves, iWon, Inktomi, InfoSpace Network, MSN.
PAID INCLUSION Small Business Listings - Setup fee: $49 per site. CPC: Flat 15 cents. Minimum spend: $15/mo. Minimum account deposit: $45. Limit one listing per URL.
Large Business Listings - Setup fee: negotiated. CPC: category pricing/rate card. Minimum spend: $2,500/mo. (for full service from account rep; $2,500 for both paid inclusion and paid placement). No limit on number of listings.
PAID PLACEMENT Sponsored Listings - Market-priced, flat model. Minimum spend: $2,500/mo. (for full service from account rep; $2,500 for both paid inclusion and paid placement).

LYCOS
Terra Lycos, Barcelona, Spain
U.S. headquarters, Waltham, MA
www.lycos.com
A directory (main results from DMOZ) and search engine (powered by FAST and also its own spider).
PAID INCLUSION InSite Select (for smaller companies): Initial membership fee $18. Annual subscription per URL per year $12.
InSite Enterprise (for larger companies): CPC basis. 48-hour refresh.
InSite Pro: Includes both paid inclusion and the search tool for your site. Starts at $189 a month.
PAID PLACEMENT Sponsored links from Overture. CPC advertising via InSite AdBuyer; opening account balance: $50; minimum bid: 5 cents.

OVERTURE
Overture Services Inc., Pasadena, CA
www.overture.com
Formerly GoTo.com. Pioneered paid-placement search. Provides paid listings to Yahoo!, MSN, Lycos, InfoSpace, AltaVista, others. Own site also includes Inktomi results.
PAID INCLUSION May be included with Inktomi’s results at Overture’s site.
PAID PLACEMENT Bidding system on CPC basis. Auto bidding, also has fixed bidding.
Minimum bid: 5 cents.
Minimum spend: $20/mo.
Minimum deposit: $50.

SPRINKS
Sprinks, New York
www.sprinks.com
A pay-for-placement search engine owned by About.com, a Primedia company. Offers sponsored links both on appropriate content pages at sites such as About.com’s GuideSites, iVillage, Earthlink and Gurl.com (“ContentSprinks”) and according to keywords on search sites such as CNET, Dogpile and Mamma.com (“KeywordSprinks”).
PAID INCLUSION None.
PAID PLACEMENT Fixed bidding process.
Minimum bid: 5 cents on keywords, 20 cents on GuideSites.
Minimum account deposit: $50.
Minimum spend: $10/mo. (typically). Invoice customers must spend at least $3,500 (for less, use credit card).

YAHOO!
Yahoo! Inc., Sunnyvale, CA
www.yahoo.com
Both human-edited directory (the first Web directory) and spider-based results from Google (“Web Page Matches”). It is the largest human-compiled guide to the web, employing about 150 editors in an effort to categorize the web. Yahoo has well over 1 million sites listed.
SITE SUBMISSION Business Express: $299 per year nonrefundable charge to be considered for inclusion in the directory. Inclusion not guaranteed.
PAID PLACEMENT Sponsored matches provided by Overture.

Top Search Engine Ranking
Because each search engine is unique and uses different algorithms and methodologies to rank websites, your site will never rank at the top of every search engine. Different search engines will rank your site based on different criteria. Some search engines use META tags (see below) to rank your site, while others evaluate the text of your site in order to determine how your site will be ranked. Other search engines use link popularity to evaluate and rank your site. As a result, your site will do better in different search engines, depending on how you manage each of these criteria.

For a free analysis of how your website ranks in the top search engines, please send an email to:
Information@TravelEMarketing.com.

We will send you a free, in-depth report on how your site ranks in the most popular search engines and give you some general recommendations on how you might improve your site, free-of-charge.

META Tags
Both Inktomi and AltaVista search engines use the META tags encoded into your Web site to rank your site. Thus, every page on your Web site should have two META Tags that tell search engines what your site is about. The "Description META Tag" below is the tool search engines use to describe your Web site. The tag below is from one of our clients, Island Getaway, in Hilton Head, South Carolina.

<meta name="description" content="Plan the perfect vacation,
honeymoon, or weekend getaway to Hilton Head Island, South
Carolina and book vacation accommodations online for golf,
tennis, swimming or long walks on the beach.">

The "Keywords META Tag" is the tool that search engines use to determine the topic or purpose of your site, based on the keywords listed in this tag. A keyword (or phrase) is a word that is entered in a search engine by a Web surfer to request specific information about a topic. For example, keyword phrases for the travel industry might include destination cities, such as "palm springs california" or "hilton head south carolina". You can specify up to 1024 characters of keywords. Be careful not to duplicate too often, as some search engines will downgrade or delete as this is a characteristic of spammers. The tag below is from one of our clients, Island Getaway, in Hilton Head, South Carolina.

<meta name="keywords" content="hilton head Island, south
carolina, hilton head sc, sc, vacation rental homes, oceanfront
homes, lodging, accommodations, rental properties, golf, beach,
family vacation, palmetto dunes, sea pines plantation, shipyard
plantation, vacation planning, honeymoon, hiltonhead">

To view the META tags in your site, in Internet Explorer click View, then click Source to view the HTML code and look for the META tags above (should be located at the top). If you do not use Internet Explorer, right click your mouse on your Web page and click View Source. If you don't have META tags on each page or if they are not unique for each page, you should consult an Internet marketing professional to update your tags (that means us!).

Keyword Frequency
Some search engines send "spiders" to your Web site and examine your page titles and the first 250 words of a page to determine what the site is about. Given this, it is important that the first few paragraphs of each Web page be keyword heavy.

Link Popularity
More and more search engines are using link popularity as a ranking criterion. It all started with Google, and now other search engines also use link popularity in their algorithms. Your link popularity is based on how many other sites link to your site. The factors determining link popularity are the quality of sites linked to yours, the relevance of those sites to yours, the quality of the link's text, and in some cases even the number of links (but in most cases it's quality versus quantity).

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