The Marketleap Report
Volume IV, Issue #3, March 4, 2004

A Marketers Guide to Search Engine Marketing and Staying Alive in 2004 - Part Two
by Keith Boswell

In the first part of our two-part guide to staying alive in 2004, we talked about understanding keywords and the major avenues to be aware of for getting into search engines. This issue we focus the light more closely on the biggest search engines you need to know about, their position in the market and how you can use the knowledge you have for each of them.

Overview of the Major Search Engines

• Google
• Yahoo (Overture, Inktomi, AltaVista and FAST)
• MSN

Google
Big surprise here, Google is going to IPO sometime in 2004. Recent statements by Google's CEO Eric Schmidt play down rumors it could happen in a few months, but if Google is wise it should go public as soon as possible. Google is confident in its cash position right now and doesn't feel it has to have an investment from the public to succeed. But their strong pay for placement product, Google AdWords, and their out of the gate profitability would likely earn them the market capital they're going to need to survive the next twelve to eighteen months.

With the coming heat poured on by Yahoo and MSN, Google’s biggest challenge is going to be finding ways to stay in people’s mind. Just having their search tools, and their distribution network won’t be enough. Now that Yahoo has pulled Google search results out, Google's biggest distribution partner is AOL. And AOL is a dying bird. People are leaving that nest faster than they can find free replacement disks at Home Depot and Lowe's.

Experimenting with services like free news, and potentially free email, isn't going to be enough for Google to maintain its current share of the search market. MSN and Yahoo are ahead of them in total traffic and growing their user base one application at a time. Search as a stand alone won't be enough for user lock-in, and what else could Google really move into – operating systems and custom content creation? That's not going to happen.

If you've ever interfaced directly with Google, there are signs that they don't have the people skills to grow beyond their perceived potential. Have you been to the Google booth at a conference and tried to talk to them about anything other than AdWords? "Good luck" and "Thank you no" are what you'll find from one of the world’s leading search companies. It's only been very recently that Google seemed to discover search engine marketers and begin to interact with them.

Google has said they won't move into paid inclusion because they feel it violates the trust of their users. If you're not in Google's organic results, or you are but performing poorly, the only choice you’ll have if you want traffic from Google is to jump into pay for placement auctions with AdWords. Get your keyword lists ready and your credit card out.

To succeed with natural search engine marketing at Google, marketers need to focus on creating and maintaining content rich websites that people will link to naturally. Building and continually enriching a quality site should be your biggest focus. Paid placement should only be on your to-do list if your site is good at converting visitors and you’re a good copywriter who can deliver good click through rates for your ads. Remember, you need to know the keywords that you are buying are going to produce tangible results. If you're just guessing, you're going to waste money and have plenty of questions later.

Yahoo (Overture/Inktomi/FAST/Altavista)
Yahoo should be the search behemoth of 2004 and they also have the most to gain in 2004. With all of their acquisitions from 2002 and 2003 coming together, they will make the largest jump amongst all of the major search engines this year. They have officially dropped Google and replaced it with their own proprietary Yahoo! Search, a move many did not expect. Most people thought they would simply use Inktomi's index as the lead, but it has proven to be Inktomi Plus.

Yahoo's steady momentum of adding new services and increasing their value to their users is paying off. They have spent the last few years growing the popularity of Google's search technology. 2004 is the year Yahoo is grabbing back their rightful share of being search royalty. Because Yahoo has combined the leading paid inclusion programs from Inktomi, FAST, AltaVista and they own one of the two largest pay-for-placement networks with Overture, they've got quite an arsenal to wield.

Yahoo is embedding itself with small business users and individuals who rely on their variety of business critical activities like e-commerce, personal finance, email, chat and more. Yahoo also has the biggest advantage in 2004 because it’s the primary driver of MSN search. Overture's sponsored results, and Inktomi's organic results now represent the lion's share of space in MSN search results for the foreseeable future. This means Inktomi and Overture power two of the three largest search portals on the Web today.

Yahoo's biggest challenge will be justifying their new paid inclusion program, Overture Site Match, as a legitimate, untainted service. Some people feel that paid inclusion must influence a sites position in organic search results because they are paying to get in.

Yahoo's best move is that they are repositioning paid inclusion by leveraging Yahoo's already intensive editorial review, so that the inclusion program becomes a seal of approval from Yahoo that the content can be trusted. The public trusts Yahoo enough to use them everyday and Yahoo’s endorsement could go a long way to legitimizing the program.

To be successful with Yahoo! Search, you're going to need to focus on your site being of the highest quality as possible, just like Google. The major difference for you is that there are several paid methods for getting your pages listed and being found at Yahoo. If you have to be at the top of search results, you can buy your way in through Overture. This is very similar to Google AdWords, so you'll need to know what words you're buying, how much they mean to your businesses success, and you’ll need to optimize your website to convert visitors into customers.

You also have options through Overture Site Match, the new paid inclusion program that ensures your pages are available to people searching in the index that powers search results in Yahoo! Search and other search partners. You should have already received a special issue of the Marketleap Report that contains more details about this new program.

MSN & Microsoft
2004 is MSN's beta year for search. Their web crawler, in-house index and search toolbar are all in beta at the present. MSN is finally gearing up to come in line with mother Microsoft closer than ever before. Bill Gates is beginning to talk about search as a concept the way he did about browsing the Web before Internet Explorer was released.

With Microsoft's next operating system looming somewhere around 2006, search will become a vital piece for tying together all of Microsoft's vast reach. Searching for information on your local computer, trusted people like your parents computer in Texas, and the rest of the Internet from one search bar will likely be located conveniently in Windows.

You cannot underestimate Microsoft and MSN's ability to turn 2005 into a year of learning as they go live with their own proprietary search technologies and prepare for the launch of the new OS. Their ability to adapt and push the technology market in directions they choose is unheralded. It was kist recently publicized that Microsoft just lost their chief commercial/paid search that had come over from Overture. This should prove but a minor road bump for Microsoft to figure out how to cash in on search, especially as they sit back and watch Yahoo.

Yahoo and Google will feel the heat once the sun at Microsoft shines fully upon them. Until then, MSN will spend most of 2004 basking in the profits from their deals with Overture for paid placement results, and Inktomi for their web results. Expect to hear more from Microsoft towards the end of the year when some of their investments in proprietary technologies begin to take shape and their vision for search integration is better defined.

If you are looking to get into MSN's search engine, see details up above about getting into Yahoo, as Yahoo is the primary driver of all search results at MSN with Overture and Inktomi.

These three search properties represent over 85-90% of all people searching and so they warrant the majority of your attention. But there are other search networks available that can produce traffic and additional exposure above and beyond the Big Three. We'll use a future report to give you information about some of the smaller companies in the search market like Ask Jeeves, FindWhat, LookSmart, Infospace, Enhance (formerly Ah-Ha) and others that you need to know about and understand.