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IN THIS ISSUE
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=>Editor’s Message =>Sponsorship Notice =>Feature Article – PPC Bid Management Software Showdown =>Industry News – Yahoo! Introduce Annual Submission Fees – New Version of SEO Buyer’s Guide Released – Overture Results Now on Excite & MSN =>Search Engine FAQ's – Can Engines Index Cgi-Bin Content? =>Site Spotlight – Web Rank Partner Opportunity =>Subscribe
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Well,
the year is barely upon us and already the search engines have
us on our toes. Yahoo has introduced a controversial (and confusing)
new annual fee, Excite & MSN have become the latest of Overture’s
conquests and PPC (pay-per-click) is the new trend in SEO campaigns.
While
looking for some software to manage PPC campaigns for some
of Web Rank’s own clients, I gathered a lot of information and free trials
that I thought Search Light readers might find useful. So this month’s
article is a review and features showdown between the major players
in the Bid Management software industry – the good, the bad and the
downright unattractive. Enjoy!
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PPC
Bid Management Software Showdown by Kalena Jordan
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If
you’ve been reading this newsletter regularly, you’ll know that
Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
is a fast growing trend in the search engine industry. Nearly all of the major
search
engines and directories have now integrated one type of PPC or another into
their
search results. At the moment Overture.com (formerly GoTo) is the clear leader
in
the PPC field, with an estimated 90% of the total PPC search market. But
others
such as FindWhat, Kanoodle and eSpotting are slowly catching on.
Overture
currently has partnerships in place with Yahoo, AOL, AV, Lycos, Netscape,
InfoSpace, MSN and Excite. People bid to purchase keywords from Overture and
the
top 2 or 3 bids (called Premium Listings) appear on their partner sites when
searches
are conducted for those keywords. Most of the time, Overture results appear
above
regular search results as “sponsored matches”, so you can see how
effective this type
of campaign can be when used to draw targeted traffic to a web site. Whenever
a
viewer clicks on a sponsored listing, they are taken to the advertiser’s
site and the
advertiser is charged for the click at the rate determined by their bid on
Overture.
The main
drawbacks to advertising on PPC engines to date have been:
a)The quick exhaustion of funds due to large traffic volume
b)The time consuming nature of bid rank analysis for multiple keywords
c)The impact of bid gaps on cost-effectiveness (when your bid is more
than it needs to be to maintain your target rank).
When you
are managing PPC campaigns for hundreds of keyword sets for multiple
client sites, these problems are compounded. Fortunately, software has sprung
up
to help people manage their PPC campaigns and automate the bidding process.
We have
reviewed eight of these Bid Management Software programs in our effort
to find the one right for our client campaigns and thought we’d share the
results
with our loyal newsletter subscribers:
The Pay Per Click Maximiser is a great product. A downloadable desktop
program,
no monthly fees, plenty of keywords and a good price for the Standard edition
(USD
$199 for 500 keywords). It supports FindWhat, Kanoodle and eSpotting in
conjunction
with Overture US & UK and allows the user to determine the bid update
frequency.
Other notable features include the ability to export reports to Excel, HTML
and email.
My only real problem with this program is the Interface, which tends to be
confusing,
(all that gray on gray) and not very intuitive. There is a help menu, but on
first launch,
it is not clear where to start or how to launch a new project. The “manage
search
terms” tab is also a little user unfriendly, but once you study the help
menu to determine
how to set your rank targets and bid limits, you’re off and running. Their
free trial download
simulates the bid optimization process, but is otherwise fully functional.
Score 8/10
Click Patrol claim to be the largest provider of
automated Pay-Per-Click bid management
services, but I can’t see any redeeming features that differentiate the
service from other
providers. For starters, it is Internet based, so if you are security
conscious, you may not
like the idea of handing over your Overture account login details to a third
party provider.
Then there are the monthly fees, which are the most expensive of all programs
reviewed,
ranging from $100 to $500, with an extra fee per keyword if you want your bids
checked
more often than every 24 hours. See the Features
Chart for details. They do support
seven
of the major PPC engines and I hear their “Auto Position” feature works
well to close price
gaps, but there is no free trial of their system that I could find, only case
studies and a
screen capture. Score 5/10
With the release of their freeware bid
optimization tool Gapster, Did-it had an opportunity
to win hearts and capitalize on a thankful market. It sure sounded promising:
free automatic
bid monitoring & updating for 200 keywords on Overture US & UK,
FindWhat and Kanoodle.
Unfortunately, they chose to abuse the privacy of their customers and win
enemies for their
trouble. As reported by Danny Sullivan in his latest Search Engine Update
newsletter, beta
users of Gapster allegedly had
their Overture account login details published on the Internet
last month, care of one of Did-it’s own servers. The security breach was
quickly corrected,
but the damage to Did-It’s reputation was already done. Mindful of this
first impression clouding my judgment, I tried to download the beta version to verify the product itself
and give them the benefit of the doubt. But at time of writing the download was unavailable
due to the software undergoing an update. Let’s hope their updating their security
protocols. Score 0/10
Another Internet based program, Save Per Click
supports more PPC engines than any of the other products we reviewed, Nine in total, including some I’ve never heard
of. They offer a free 7day trial, but you need to have an account already in place at one of the
supported PPC engines. This is a fairly straightforward program, but my major gripe is price
and the inability to pre-determine bid update frequency, although you CAN choose time of day.
The monthly fee ranges from $19.95 to $89.95 for the Standard edition (updates once a day)
and $59.95 to $199.95 for the Pro edition (updates once an hour). Price range is
determined by number of keywords. See the Features
Chart for details. Score 6/10
Probably the pick of the Internet based programs,
Manage Bid’s Auto Pilot software was the only one reviewed that provided unlimited keywords. The hitch is that each
keyword will cost you 0.25 USD a month to monitor, with a minimum spend of $25 per domain, per
month. Bid updates are done every 24 hours and the program provides support for eight PPC
engines (some obscure). There is also an Economy Mode for the penny pinchers, at 0.10
USD per keyword, with a minimum spend of $10 per domain, per month. But economizers
must update their bids manually – see the Features
Chart for details.
Score 7/10
Now this one has real potential. You have the
choice of purchasing a lifetime version or a
monthly subscription and you also have the flexibility of determining how
often your bids are
checked and updated. Keywords supported range from 50 to 5,000+ with costs
staggered
from $89 or $12 per month for 50 keywords to $999 or $100 per month for 5000+
keywords
(see the Features
Chart for detailed pricing). With a
“Smart Bid” feature to ensure your bids
are cost-effective and the ability to import keywords straight from Overture,
this new product
has many features the bigger names don’t. You can print reports or email
them directly to
customers and the developers claim to keep your login and account info secure.
It also
supports unlimited Overture accounts for those of you with multiple clients.
Currently the
software only supports Overture.com, but a new release planned shortly will
support other
engines and include new features. The 10 day, 10 keyword trial version has a
few bugs to be ironed out and the interface isn’t as intuitive as others, but definitely
one to watch. Score 7/10
Not the most feature-packed product, Position
Guardian (Premium) is an Internet based bid
monitoring and gap analysis tool that automates the process of checking your
bids on Overture and sends you daily notification of bid gaps. Unlike the other products
reviewed, Position Guardian does not include automated bid updating, you have to manually change
the bids yourself by logging in to your Overture account. Sure it’s cheaper than
some, with prices ranging from $7.95 to $57.95 per month depending on keyword numbers, but it
still seems like a lot to pay for less than half the work (see the Features
Chart for detailed pricing). In their defense, they do provide a free online version that allows you to
manually check for bid gaps one keyword at a time – handy if you’re worried about that all
important keyword. Score 4/10
We have a winner! BidRight was very hard to fault.
A downloadable desktop program, no monthly fees, generous keyword limits and a very competitive price for their new
release Pro edition (USD $199 for 500 keywords). See the Features
Chart for more pricing options. Version
2 supports FindWhat, Kanoodle and eSpotting in conjunction with Overture US & UK and
allows the user to determine the bid update frequency from every 60 seconds to every 24 hours.
Their interface follows the WYSISYG principle and it was the easiest of all the software to
install and start using.
Particularly impressive is the “Gap Surfing” tool that finds the most
cost-effective position from a range of ranks that you predetermine. So if you wanted to remain in the top 5
positions, you choose #1 as your target rank and enable gap surfing with a range of 4. BidRight will
find the largest price gap in the top 5 and slot your bid in there automatically whenever it is
scheduled to update, preventing you from overbidding and saving you lots of money in the process.
Other new features include the ability to export reports in CSV format, a drop back rank feature
when maximum bid has been reached. Combine all this with the ability to customize the update
frequency for your most important keywords and you have a very powerful tool that becomes a must
for managing any PPC campaign. You can download a fully functioning 15 day demo, with the
only disadvantage a five keyword limit. Score 9/10
Well
BidRight was the ultimate winner of our Showdown and I was so impressed with
the product that I immediately signed up to become an affiliate! If you would like to buy
BidRight, you may like to use our affiliate link: http://store.yahoo.com/cgi-bin/clink?bidright+NARxJp+index.html.
Be sure to mention Coupon Code WR 007 to obtain a 5% discount (we do get a commission if you use
our link, so if that
bothers you, feel free to use the general link above). Remember you can view
the Features Chart for all the software reviewed from the longer version of this article located at our
site: http://www.high-search-engine-ranking.com/PPC_Bid_Management_Software_Showdown.htm.
If you
are in the market for any kind of Bid Management Software, you may want to
keep an eye on current talk about the implications of such software on server load at
Overture. Apparently Overture are considering restricting access to their servers from persons using bid
management software because the server load is becoming too great. They may block access from certain IP
addresses that abuse the system or they may restrict access by software. To reduce the impact on
search engine servers, you should use your bid management software responsibly, restricting bid
checking to every few hours or daily rather than every few minutes. However Overture decide to handle this issue,
we’ll keep you updated with developments.
The
above article may be re-published as long as the following paragraph
and URL link are included at the end of the article:
Kalena
Jordan, CEO of Web Rank Ltd, was among the first
search engine optimization experts in Australasia and is
well known and respected in her field. For more of her tips
on search engine ranking and online marketing, please visit: http://www.high-search-engine-ranking.com
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------------------------------------------------------------
SEARCH ENGINE INDUSTRY NEWS
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Yahoo!
Introduce Annual Submission Fees
Just
when we thought Yahoo! couldn’t surprise us any more, they have introduced a
new recurring annual fee for Express Submission to commercial categories. The
price
is the same as initial Express submission: US $299 (or US $600 for adult
sites), but the
fee is now payable PER YEAR. Sites already included in the index on or before
28th
December 2001 are spared the annual fee. Sites submitted after that date are
subject to
additional review each year and (assuming the site passes review), the new fee
is
automatically deducted annually from the credit card used when first
submitting.
Revealed
quietly, with just 24 hours notice, the new fees created plenty of initial
controversy
and confusion, particularly over the automatic renewal system, which is poorly
explained in
Yahoo’s Express Service Agreement. Clarification from Yahoo! Billing states:
After
you submit your site, you will receive an email from Yahoo! that will include
an order
ID for your submission. Please use the order ID as a reference for
billing-related questions
only, and contact our Customer Care department at bizex-billing@yahoo-inc.com
to have
your credit card information updated. You
will receive a renewal email 30 days before the
recurring annual charge to your contact email address on file”.
Also,
if the agreement is cancelled at least five business days before the due date,
there
will supposedly be no additional annual fee. But for SEO’s who normally use
their own
credit cards for their client’s Yahoo! submissions, but don’t want bulk
automatic debits
from their credit cards each year, this new system creates a billing headache.
Personally,
I think the new fee is a little exorbitant, particularly for smaller companies
that
may have scrimped and saved for their initial submission, only to be faced
with the prospect
of annual payment. You would think that a fairer pricing structure would have
been a high
initial cost, with a smaller recurring fee (say US $100 a year).
So why
introduce an annual fee? The following reasons are being suggested at various
forums:
1)They
are cash-strapped and desperate to raise capital.
This is doubtful, given their
concrete market share, but don’t forget they partnered with Overture last
month in
another bid to raise funds quickly. Perhaps cash-hungry would be more apt.
2)They’ve
realized their index is cluttered with spam and are attempting to weed out
the serious sites from the clutter.
Possibly, but spammy sites have been in their index
forever – it would be strange if Yahoo! suddenly grew a conscience about
this issue.
Besides, many spammy sites have deep pockets and could afford the new fee.
3)They
have researched their market VERY thoroughly and believe the cost is justified
by their continued market share and perceived return-on-investment for
customers.
This seems logical. It’s probably no coincidence that the day before the new
fees were
announced, Yahoo! and ACNielsen issued a joint press release regarding growing
consumer confidence in e-commerce and wider acceptance of online transactions.
4)They
are changing their business model to an advertising focus.
Most likely. Danny
Sullivan of Search Engine Watch has likened Yahoo’s new fee model to that of
the
Yellow Pages – an annual advertising space, with fees to match. It certainly
bears
all the same hallmarks of a display ad contract, with the addition of an
annual
editorial review. When viewed in these terms, the price is almost justifiable.
Whatever
their reasoning, Yahoo! is likely to make a small fortune out of the new fee
standard.
Sure there will be plenty of small companies that simply cannot afford the
annual payment, but
it is unlikely to affect the majority of companies that will simply increase
their marketing budgets to cover it. Love them or hate them, Yahoo! continues to dominate the search
market and we continue to fork out the money for our little slice of that market.
Marketing
Sherpa’s insightful Buyer’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization and
Positioning
Firms has been updated to include rating information on 17 UK firms to
accompany the 26 US
based search engine optimization firms originally reviewed. For those
unfamiliar with the Guide,
it is basically a detailed comparison of SEO firms, rated from A+ to F
according to set criteria,
including pricing, methodology, knowledge, best practice and sample rankings.
Researched
by Anthony Muller & Tim Gibbon and published by MarketingSherpa, Inc., the
Guide includes an Easy Scan Best Practices Chart and a valuable list of questions
you should ask any SEO firm before hiring them. The new version also includes an Executive
Overview of SEO and a Best Resources Guide to SEO related sites and tools on the net. The Buyer’s
Guide is available as an
instant download PDF for US $119. Watch this space for info on the next
edition that will include SEO Firms from Canada, Australia (including
Web Rank!) and more from the U.S.
PPC leader Overture.com
(formerly GoTo) spent the holidays tying up deals with Excite &
MSN to provide paid search listings at the top of results on those search
portals.
As previewed last month,
all searches conducted at www.excite.com
now include Overture's
top five search listings at the top of the page, with the remaining results
coming from an ODP
feed. For selected terms, it claims, 10 additional Overture search listings
are displayed. Although where the search distinction begins between Overture and ODP results is
unclear. Some tests we conducted showed Overture results as the top 40 with no sign of ODP. But where
they do occur, the ODP results have a link to ODP submission underneath and show up as
Directory results.
What is particularly
scary is that these Overture listings are not marked as advertising or
“sponsored matches” like on most other engines. On Excite, there is no
indication whatsoever
these are paid results as they are simply labelled “search results”, a
very misleading practice
in our opinion. What would Ralph Nader make of it?
MSN Search has taken a
different approach with their integration of Overture paid listings.
Responsibly labelled as “Sponsored Sites” and distinguished from other
results by bullet points,
the top three Overture listings appear above Web Directory results with a
little “About” link to
denote their existence as advertising.
However, MSN has taken
the Overture integration one step further, by melding their own search
results with Overture’s for particular keyword combinations. For example,
type in a search on http://search.msn.com for “used cars”
and you’ll see three of MSN’s “Featured Sites” above
Overture “sponsored sites” on the results page. According to MSN, these
“Featured
Sites” are
links that MSN Search editors believe are likely to be particularly relevant
to users, chosen
from sites published by MSN affiliates, partners, sponsors, and advertisers.
Missed out years ago on your perfect domain? Looking for a new one and thinking all the good ones are gone? Think again – many of the domains registered over 1999 and 2000 are coming up for renewal NOW. Your chances of grabbing a great name have just gotten a lot better, so don’t miss out! Try : www.dotster.com
or www.godaddy.com for
availability.
(thanks to newriver for this great tip!)
*-----------------HOT
TIP------------------*
------------------------------------------------------------ SEARCH ENGINE FAQ'S : Can
Engines Index the Cgi-Bin?
-----------------------------------------------------------
Web
Rank answers your search engine questions.
Please submit your FAQ's
From:
Mike Bulmer
Apart
from our home page, most of our site is made
up of dynamic pages stemming from the cgi-bin. My
question is: can search engines spider the contents
of the cgi-bin?
Thanks,
Mike
~~~~~~~~~~
Kalena's Response ~~~~~~~~~~
Hi
Mike
I
had to turn to my friends in the ihelpyou Forums for
help on this one (http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums/)
as I wasn’t 100% certain myself! (Thanks to Alan Perkins
and Mazy for advice on this).
The
easy answer is: yes, most search engines are capable
of crawling the cgi-bin. But how much of the contents are
crawled depends on the individual search engine and
whether the URL’s are dynamic in nature. Some engines
will not crawl dynamic URL’s containing symbols such as
“?”, as they can cause spider traps (endless code loops).
Both
AltaVista and Google can index dynamic content, even
symbol filled URL’s. But for the rest, you are better off
integrating a parameter workaround to remove symbols
from your URL’s, whether they are in the cgi-bin or not.
Hope
this helps!
Kalena
Please submit your FAQ
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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SITE SPOTLIGHT: Web Rank Partner Opportunity
------------------------------------------------------------
Are
you in the business of web site design or hosting?
Want to offer your clients search engine marketing services
but have no time or expertise? Are your clients demanding
better search engine rankings?
Then
partner with us! Become a Web Rank Partner,
on-selling our services as part of your own and we’ll give
you all the marketing/sales material you need, plus a
20% discount on all services. Or merely refer clients to
us for a flat 10% commission!
Email us for more info!
------------------------------------------------------------
LAST MONTH:
------------------------------------------------------------
Last
month we discussed several important topics including:
-
Search Engine Predictions for 2002
- Yahoo!
& Overture Ignore All but US & Canada
- Looksmart’s New Small Biz Options
- Excite – Wanted Dead or Alive?
- AltaVista To Refresh Country Indices
- How Often to Resubmit?
If
you missed these or other key topics, you can find back issues of The
Search Light at:
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COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
------------------------------------------------------------
The
information presented in The Search Light has been compiled from
various sources for the benefit of our clients. You should not rely on
the information contained within this newsletter as detailed advice.
No part of this newsletter may be copied without permission from
Web Rank Ltd, the copyright owners 2001.You may forward this
newsletter, as long as it's kept in its entirety.
