ExactSeek Explained (Part 2)

by Mel Strocen

Published on this site: July 28th, 2005 - See more articles from this month

Part 1 of this article looked at ExactSeek's free site listing options and do-it-yourself tools that enable webmasters to maximize website visibility and improve site ranking withoutExactSeek input. Part 2 examines ExactSeek's new paid inclusion (PI) program and and how it stacks up against pay-per-click (PPC) offerings and the once popular paid inclusion programs that were available through Inktomi and other search engines.

Search Revenue - The Paid Inclusion and PPC Models

The popularity of a search engine may be primarily related to the quality of the search results it delivers, but the driving force behind search engine innovation is revenue. At this pointin time, most search engines and directories derive the bulk of their revenue from pay-per-click, and/or paid inclusion listings.

Pay-Per-Click Programs

By now most webmasters and site owners are familiar with the pay-per-click concept. In brief, anyone can place a per click bid on a keyword term related to the products, services or content offered on his/her website and then sit back towatch the traffic roll in.

Advantages

1. Fast Results - ad campaigns can be kicked off within hours.
   
   
2. Targeted Traffic - with proper keyword research, advertiserscan be assured of receiving visitors who are actually interested in their offerings.
   
   
3. Ranking Control - site listing position in a PPC engine's search results can be determined by bidding high or low.

Disadvantages

1. Cost - PPC advertising is becoming increasingly expensive as advertisers compete for the most favorable keyword terms.
   
   
2. Click Fraud - a growing problem that is quickly tarnishing the PPC concept and costing advertisers big dollars for bogus results. Some estimates put click fraud as high as 20%.
   
   
3. Constant Monitoring - advertisers are forced to constantly monitor keyword bids, results and listing position to ensure they are not being supplanted by competitors or gouged by the engines they contracted with.

Paid Inclusion Programs

The paid inclusion model predates pay-per-click and at one time was fairly popular and offered by Inktomi, Ask Jeeves, Yahoo! and other engines. In general, a one time annual payment guaranteed an advertiser quick site inclusion into a major search engine's database and the promise of frequent site indexing.

The major drawback with paid inclusion was that advertisers received little more for their money than those who were lucky enough to be included in a search engine's results for free. Paid inclusion simply failed to address the advertiser need for premium site positioning. The old saw of "you get what you pay for" didn't apply and as a result paid inclusion has slowly but steadily lost ground to pay-per-click and today is an option found at very few search engines and only a small number of web directories.

The slow death of paid inclusion is unfortunate because, if implemented and presented properly, paid inclusion offers far more to advertisers than pay-per-click. The most significant advantage is a fixed cost. The key, of course, is in the implementation and here one has to wonder if the major engines have just missed the boat or moved away from paid inclusion because there is far more money to be made with pay-per-click.

ExactSeek's Hybrid Paid Inclusion Program

The ExactSeek PI program grew out of a belief that the Web didn't need another PPC engine and that the PPC model, like so many advertising concepts before it, would gradually be abandoned as advertisers tired of spiralling costs and rampant click fraud.

Exactseek examined the pros and cons of PPC and PI advertising and then tried to address the problems in an innovative and unique way. The result was a program that took the best aspects of the PPC and PI concepts and melded them into a hybrid PI model that in many ways is similar to the Google Adwords program without the pay-per-click component.

Advertisers are able to purchase keyword terms (words or phrases) for a period of 3 or 12 months at a fixed, one-time fee. Whenever vistors search a purchased keyword term, the advertiser's ad which consists of a URL, short Title (30 characters) and Description (100 characters), is shown as an ad box in the right column of ExactSeek's search results.

The sale of any keyword term is restricted to a maximum of 30 buys. Since the number of paid listing ad boxes that can appear on any search results page is limited to 10, all advertisers are assured of exposure on the first 3 pages of search results.

To further ensure exposure equality, paid listings are rotated with every search within a search results page as well as between search result pages. Assuming a keyword term was sold out, any paid listing for that keyword term would appear on the first page of search results on average once in every 3 searches of that term. This would be a worst case scenario for an advertiser. However, a buyer of a keyword term that had been sold 10 or fewer times would see his/her paid listing always appear on the first page of search results.

This hybrid model puts the webmaster/site owner/advertiser first and search engine revenues second, since the number of times a keyword term can be sold is restricted, bidding for listing position is unnecessary, and there is no additional revenue to be made from listing generated clicks.

In addition to receiving top 10 exposure, advertisers in the ExactSeek PI program also benefit in other ways. A complete list of the benefits is provided at: http://www.exactseek.com/featured_listings.html

In brief, however, some of those benefits include:

1. Low, Fixed Cost: Advertisers pay a one-time, flat fee, starting at $12 per listing, and dropping on volume buys.
   
   
2. Quick Inclusion: 6 to 8 hours.
   
   
3. Variable Listing Duration: 3 or 12 month terms.
   
   
4. Member Account: Advertisers have access to a member interface where they can monitor click-thru and search impression stats and edit their listings at anytime.
   
   
5. Exposure: Top 10 exposure across the ExactSeek search engine partner network of 45+ search engines as well as exposure in the ExactSeek search partner distribution network.

Currently, ExactSeek PI listings are displayed more than 120 million times per month and that number is expected to grow over the next few months as additional search engines and directories join the network. Interest has been so high in fact that the network has been soun off as a separate entity called the Independent Search Engine & Directory Network (ISEDN) with its own website at: http://www.isedn.org .

Although all members in the ISEDN will carry ExactSeek paid inclusion listings, the ISEDN's primary objective is to provide affordable and effective search engine marketing to any website unable, or unwilling, to support the rising costs of PPC or to devote the necessary time and resources to search engine optimization (SEO). Secondary goals for the ISEDN have yet to be determined, but areas currently under discussion include the possibility of contributions in the area of open source search software development and search relevance.

Whether or not ExactSeek and the ISEDN have a significant impact on the search industry as a whole remains to be seen. At minimum, the membership hopes to slow the trend to the gradual monopolization of search on the Web and to offer searchers and site owners additional search and advertising options.



Mel Strocen is CEO of the Jayde Online Network of websites. The Jayde network currently consists of 20 websites, including ExactSeek.com (http://www.exactseek.com) and SiteProNews.com (http://www.sitepronews.com), SEO-News.com (http://seo-news.com),GoArticles.com (http://www.goarticles.com) and Blog-search.com