I hardly ever take the New York Post as a reliable news source - but occasionally, they've had scoops on some good stories (I think the MicroHoo story was one of them - but nothing ever came of it) like SEARCH & DESTROY - AUDIT COULD SIPHON AD $$ FROM GOOGLE.
"….Google's own research shows surfers look toward natural search over paid search by a ration of 4-to-1, Millo said. "
"…ISM's audits track the top 4.5 million search phrases on Google and Yahoo!, a total of 7.3 billion searches a month, to determine which companies across 50 business sectors pop up most frequently in the top three or four positions in natural search. Natural search results are based mostly on a site's traffic, relevance and how many other sites link to it.
The ISM audits, to be released in London, break down which of 50 business sectors are locked up - that is, have large chunks of natural search dominated by a handful of companies - and which are wide open.
The digital camera sector is pretty well locked up, the audit found, meaning it would be very hard to create a Web site or Internet marketing campaign that would successfully steal market share.
DPReview.com, a site with news and reviews of digital cameras, the ISM audit found, was the leader, turning up in the top three or four search results on Google and Yahoo! 73.7 percent of the time. It was purchased last month by Amazon.com, which was looking to sell more cameras.
"It's quite interesting that Amazon.com didn't look to mount an Internet marketing campaign and purchase search ads to gain market share but rather bought a company few people [had] heard of but which produced excellent natural search results," Millo noted. "
What I found interesting was which sectors would be "locked up" (ie: like "Digital Cameras") where almost nothing you could do, from an SEO perspective, could get ou much or any marketshare in Search.
So if you wanted to rank on the top of search results for Digital Cameras, based on the ISM results, you'd might as well forget it because the top results are locked up by a few sites have a lot of backlinks and are well optimized.
But if you try to use Paid Placement - you often spend a fortune and get nothing much for it according to Search Engine Land; however Search Engine Land does see value in Paid Placement whereas the New York Post article does not.
But I don't usually read the New York Post and hardly ever believe anything that is published there.
Just a quick update - SpyFu.com, which I've written about several times - and is pretty good for competitive analysis - is now something you have to pay for:Here's the announcement I got in my email today - minus the discount codes - I think giving them out in mass will invalidate them (besides they'll quickly be used up):
I think it might be worth subscribing to the new SpyFu - I'll give it a try and post my impressions here in a couple of weeks - I'm on my way to Emetrics Summit in San Francisco, so I don't have time to do it now.
SpyFu Goes Live. Thanks for Your Support.
Today, I am proud to announce the launch of SpyFu.com. Just minutes ago, we took down the Beta sign and we are now officially live. Since going into beta in October, millions of people have visited SpyFu.com, and we know that we owe that success to you.
You are a member of a core group that has helped spread the word , and provided us with much needed feedback to make the site what it is today. You may have written blog entries or forum posts about us, emailed a friend, or just mentioned it in passing. What we do know is that every single visitor has found out about us by word of mouth; because of you.
https://www.spyfu.com/store/
(taken out)
When you subscribe to SpyFu, you’ll have access to all the data and reports you’ve help grow in SpyFu Beta, but now the database will be refreshed every month. In addition, you’ll have access to subscriber-only features including:
- Advanced Search (Search keywords and domains by budget, clicks, cost/click, etc)
- Full Keyword and Domain Lists.
- Domain
- Subdomain
- Path
- Page
- Full Url search and browse.
- Export to Excel or CSV
By supporting SpyFu now, you’ll help shape future SpyFu-style innovations set to break ground in the coming months including:
- SpyFu for Google.co.uk
- SpyFu for Yahoo
- SpyFu for MSN
- Trends, charts, and visualization for SpyFu
- Trademark monitoring
I really hope you’ll take me up on this offer. We have done our best to keep SpyFu affordable while also providing for its future. Thanks again, and I’ll see you on the forums.
=========================================================
Plenty of good reason to do this - mainly to shore up Microsoft AdCenter.
"…The rumored hypothetical purchase price is $2 billion. Forget about that for a moment, the acquisition would make Microsoft much more credible in the minds of advertisers than it has been to date and would also give a boost to AdCenter by association. In other words, brand and other marketers reluctant to commit to AdCenter might be more inclined to do so if they’re already working within the company via DoubleClick and can be cross-sold."
As Microsoft and Yahoo continue to improve, make themselves more attractive as alternatives to Google AdWords and AdSense, it may slow down Google's growth.
