September 13, 2007

blinkx and Utarget partners in online video advertising deal

blinkx, the video search engine, today announced its partnership with the UK's online video advertising network Utarget, to place video advertising around its content for UK audiences. Utarget will focus on monetizing blinkx's video inventory including ITN News and ITN Celebrity.

Suranga Chandratillake, founder and CEO of blinkx, says his company is looking to develop more geo-targeted matches between content owners and advertisers to better monetize their output, and that "working with Utarget will offer their partners the simplest way of getting in touch with UK advertisers."

“blinkx is easily the most advanced search engine for users to access video." said Phil Cooper, Utarget CEO. Partnering with blinkx will offer our advertisers quality video inventory and a large, well-informed audience.”

Exclusive: blinkx has also informed me that uTarget's ads will be pre-roll, and run before user-selected video. According to a YouGove study commissioned by Utarget Networks, UK Internet users are far more receptive to pre-roll online video advertising than U.S. internet users. Read the commentary on this story at the Grantastic Designs blog.

Posted by Grant Crowell at 8:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 7, 2007

Pepperjam Signs Exclusive Deal With DoubleClick

In an interesting move for a large scale agency, Pepperjam has signed an exclusive partnership deal with DoubleClick.

"We made the switch to DoubleClick because they offer a fully-integrated ad management platform to seamlessly manage all digital marketing channels," said Kristopher B. Jones, president and CEO of Pepperjam. "It became a burden to manage multiple products for each marketing channel. DoubleClick instead provides cutting-edge technology and in-depth analysis enabling us to focus on serving our clients."

Amid the mutual back slapping by DoubleClick and Pepperjam, the press release detailed an interesting use of the DART to monitor search ROI as well. Though a component able to be adapted to measure search ROI has been available, most agencies use a stand alone program for their PPC analytics.

The press release states: DFA provides Pepperjam with a hosted, enterprise-class advertising management and serving solution to help their clients reach their online goals efficiently and effectively. DFA offers sophisticated targeting capabilities, ad serving technology, robust reporting and rich media capabilities. As a highly advanced ad management platform on the market today, DFA allows marketers to centrally manage creative assets, traffic more compelling ads, track results beyond impressions and clicks to understand conversion, improve ROI and branding and automatically optimize creative to improve results.

Pepperjam's powerful search-engine marketing management solution will rely on the Web-based DART Search, a solution for all aspects of creating and managing search advertising. It is integrated with DFA, so Pepperjam clients get a clear view of results across both display and search advertising, enabling them to boost efficiency, effectiveness and ROI. The Web-based DART Search system is integrated with leading engines so Pepperjam clients have insight into what's happening from first bid to final report, across multiple search engines. Additionally, DART Search is synchronized with DFA, so Pepperjam clients can gain a clear view of their results.

With DoubleClick Rich Media, Pepperjam can easily collaborate with their agency partners, publishers and advertisers to produce campaigns that garner great results. DoubleClick Rich Media integrates the best of interactive design, ad serving and reporting into a sophisticated integrated rich media offering.

Posted by Frank Watson at 12:38 PM | Permalink

January 18, 2007

PPC Back Fill Map or Who Is King Of Garbitrage

While this is not news - it really should be. Most of the small search engines are arbitraging one way or another. And the Big Three (clearly 3 since Ask back fills Google PPC) make their cuts on the front end.

A Bruce Clay map for all the PPC partnerships and the rules that govern them would be handy.

My rant here started when I noticed at Ask that we were not being served Ask ads but rather our Google ads. Spoke to one of the people over at Ask and was told that they back fill with Google when the CTR drops below their acceptable level.

Guess that is the level where Google would pay them more to put their ads in... so some of our $10 plus Google terms pay Ask more (rumors of what percentage vary but let's work with 60%) - they get $6 a click from Google when we advertise for say $3 on Ask.... so the CTR would have to be 200% to make them enough money to change....

They are not the only ones.... I see many of the small engines pushing their results out into even thinner search provider portals.... the search results may stay at the site but the results are feed straight from another engine... yet many of these engines also arbitrage their onsite inventory with one of the Big Three so they force their advertisers to bid up to at least what these other people are willing to pay.

Not making much sense - after a while people are going to realize they are just using variations on Google, Yahoo and MSN and just go there first.

I want to start a Back Fill Map - so everyone post what you know in the forum and I will develop something that we all can use.

Posted by Frank Watson at 4:05 PM | Permalink

October 5, 2006

LiveDeal Partnership Moves: Vast, SimplyHired

Within the past two days LiveDeal has announced two significant relationships: one with jobs metasearch engine SimplyHired and another, today, with general classifieds aggregator/search engine Vast.

Both sites will be providing all their content to LiveDeal, which will integrate it into the LiveDeal look and feel. LiveDeal is one of the fastest growing online classifieds sites according to comScore, showing 104% year-over-year traffic growth.

Craigslist is the undisputed king of online classifieds, with 13 million monthly uniques across its network. But, eventually, sites such as LiveDeal and Oodle, with more comprehensive information and greater usability, might start to challenge the venerable community site.

There's some additional information on the deals, LiveDeal and the classifieds marketplace on my blog.

Posted by Greg Sterling at 6:58 PM | Permalink

September 7, 2006

ESPN To Manage Own Text Ads & Drop Yahoo

AdWeek.com reports that ESPN.com will be dropping Yahoo's text ads from their site and replacing it with their own ads. ESPN.com will be using Quigo's AdSonar product to manage the auctioning, keyword targeting and placement of the text ads on the site. AdWeek cites that ESPN may be making this move to keep a larger share of the ad dollar, where currently Yahoo may be taking 20% of the ad dollars made on the ESPN.com site.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:04 AM | Permalink

July 27, 2006

Baidu To Be Default Engine On All HP Computers Ship To China

Philipp Lenssen reports that Baidu, the popular Chinese search engine, will be the default search engine on all new HP's shipped to China after October 2006. As Philipp notes, this is bad for Google who has been pushing hard into the Chinese market. Today the Wall Street Journal reports that Baidu's second-quarter earnings were very high, "but didn't meet some investors' higher expectations."

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 11:44 AM | Permalink

July 17, 2006

June 23, 2006

Japan's Softbank Mobile Phones To Use Yahoo As Content Portal

MarketWatch reports that Softbank, who acquired Vodafone, will be using Yahoo to "bring the broad world of the Internet" to their mobile users. The mobile phones will have some sort of direct link to the Yahoo portal, to bring the content of that portal to Softbank's mobile users.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:00 AM | Permalink

June 13, 2006

MySpace Looking To Auction Search To Google, Microsoft or Yahoo

We heard last month that MySpace is interested in partnering with Google or Microsoft. Now Yahoo appears to be in the running. MySpace-owner News Corp's Chief Operating Officer Peter Chermin said today MySpace plans to "auction off our search business of of the three biggest, Google, Yahoo and MSN, and see the best we can get."

I thought Yahoo was already powering the results at MySpace, since you can see Yahoo results coming up when you search over there. This Reuters article mentions the same. But Yahoo tells me that's not the case. It's undisclosed Yahoo partners that are reselling Yahoo's results to MySpace. And presumably, MySpace would get a better deal by cutting out the middlemen.

Coincidentally, TechCrunch had a post today about MySpace and its stature as the sixth largest search network, based on recent comScore figures. But as I commented over there

Let?s qualify that sixth place ranking. They have a 0.6% share of the US search market which is way, way behind 5th place Ask with a 5.8% share and not even registering with Google?s 43.1% share. Well, they?ll catch up. Yeah, maybe. Then again, with all those pages viewed, this is the best they can do with search activity already? And that search is powered by Yahoo, so though MySpace isn?t a Yahoo site, Yahoo certainly gets its listings in front of this small percentage of searchers.

You can't ignore the monster that MySpace has become and the potential it represents. Then again, it currently is tiny in search even with those millions of users.

Postscript: Previously I'd written that Revenue Science was providing the middleman service of search results for MySpace, because that was the name I was given by Yahoo when I asked about the search results. Yahoo later pointed out that they said Revenue Science resold their contextual listings to MySpace but that the keyword-triggered results are handled by others, partners they won't name.

Revenue Science also emailed to say they do more than act as a middleman for web sites, providing ads based on behavioral activity. That's true. And they may be providing behavioral ads for MySpace. It's whoever is providing the search results that's serving as the go-between.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:24 PM | Permalink

June 12, 2006

SimplyHired Powers MySpace Jobs

A number of people have talked about the potential power of MySpace getting into search. Well, the company put its toes in the water this morning with the launch of MySpace Jobs, powered by SimplyHired.

Back in April, SimplyHired raised $13.5m from Fox Interactive Media (FIM), MySpace's parent company. At that time, Ross Levinsohn, FIMs president joined the SimplyHired Board.

When I was first briefed on this story, SimplyHired gave me a run down of the MySpace numbers, saying that the site had 76m members with 42m unique users a month. Well, my 'network' is now up to 84m people, so I'd guess that the uniques number has risen too. As for the demographics on MySpace, the core user group is 16-34 years old, a demo ripe for summer internships, first jobs, and new jobs...all available through SimplyHired's 5m+ job listings.

At launch, MySpace Jobs is focusing on summer jobs, highlighting examples like Lifeguards, Camp Couselor, and retail positions at Gap and Abercrombie.

Also featured on the MySpace Jobs page is the always irreverant SimplyFired, which is giving away an Xbox 360 to the best summer job sob story.

Posted by Brian Smith at 10:20 AM | Permalink

May 2, 2006

Google Worried About Microsoft's Browser Advantage? What Advantage?

I was off yesterday (it was a holiday in England), so I merrily missed the fireworks over Google's objections to Microsoft's plans for search in Internet Explorer 7. Nevertheless, a few calls from reporters penetrated my holiday bubble, and I added a brief note with my thoughts below Barry's post about the news. But today, I wanted to more formally revisit the issue. In short, I find Google's concerns pretty overblown, somewhat hypocritical and most important, worry over something that's not likely going to hurt them.

I am nauseatingly exhausted by idea that Microsoft will conjure up some magical method of yanking people into its MSN Windows Live Whatever You Want To Call It search service via the Windows operating system or the Internet Explorer browser. Microsoft has failed for years to be successful in this, which is why it's amazing anyone would still believe it.

In the longer version of this post for Search Engine Watch members, I revisit the tired facts in more depth:

How search has been integrated into Windows and Internet Explorer since 1996 but failed to help Microsoft.
How even when MSN Search was made the default choice by 2001, Google still rose in traffic share.
How putting the search box into the "chrome" of the browser doesn't necessarily mean Microsoft will have a major win this time.
How search via toolbars still remain the minority of the way searches happen.

Meanwhile, skip past the business aspects. What about the consumer issue of choice? The New York Times writes of Google's preferred solution:

The best way to handle the search box, Google asserts, would be to give users a choice when they first start up Internet Explorer 7. It says that could be done by asking the user to either type in the name of their favorite search engine or choose from a handful of the most popular services, using a simple drop-down menu next to the search box. The Firefox and Opera browsers come with Google set as the default, but Ms. Mayer said Google would support unfettered choice on those as well.

Sure, I can get behind the "give people a choice from the beginning" idea. But if Google wants Microsoft to do that, then Google should make it happen right now in Firefox, which pretty much is Google's surrogate browser. If this is the best way for a browser to behave, then Google should be putting its weight on Firefox to make it happen. And Google should also ensure it does the same with Dell, where it has a partnership that I believe makes it the default search engine on new Dell computers.

It would be much easier to back Google's suggestions for IE7 if it was already doing this with its own partnerships. That's especially so given this latest article comes two months after the Wall Street Journal gave big play to Google's concerns with IE7. Back in February, the Journal wrote:

In December, for these and other reasons, Google refused to sign an agreement with Microsoft relating to the new browser's search capabilities. Microsoft left Google off the list of alternative search services. A month later, Microsoft notified Google it would be included on the list with or without a signed agreement, according to people familiar with the matter. Microsoft says after a review of its legal position, it realized it could include Google without a formal pact.

So Google's been concerned about choice for months. Nevertheless, it has failed to make any changes in Firefox, as I wrote after reviewing the Wall Street Journal article:

It's an odd argument, given that Google has not demanded that Firefox make consumers do similar choices in that browser. A partnership deal makes Google the default in Firefox, except for Asian-language versions where Yahoo cut its own deals.

In the end, I find it almost amazing that Google feels it needs to drop hints to the US Justice Department and the EU that it perhaps needs protection. In the search space, it's Google that remains the major player that many people feel may need to have a counter to. A list of the most popular search engines? Since those are largely US-dominated companies, I suspect the EU would want to change the playing field not to stop Microsoft but to hinder both Google and Microsoft. Is that a box Google really wants to open?

Finally, some second-day stories, that I've reviewed after writing the article above:

Google supports choice...except on FireFox and Opera from Microsoft's Don Dodge raising the same issue I covered above, that Google has hardly demonstrated a support of choice in the way it demands of Microsoft.
Google's Double Standard from Yahoo's Jeremy Zawodny, again looking at Google's failure to support choice.
Google cries foul, but for what? from Ed Bott provides nice screenshots on how changing providers in IE7 is about the same as changing in Firefox with one exception - MSN Search is NOT an option in Firefox while Google IS an option in IE7. How about Google putting some pressure on Firefox to let Microsoft in the door. It is one of the web's major search engines. It ought to be on that list.
Google and choice from Nick Carr has the interesting suggestion that if Google's for choice, shouldn't the Google home page -- which gets far more users than any browser toolbar -- let users make a search choice? The idea gave me a chuckle, but I wouldn't agree. If you go to Google, you wanted Google. I don't buy into the idea you went there because you thought Google was just a synonym for search.
Microsoft and Google Set to Wage Arms Race from the New York Times follows on yesterday's article to look at the idea that in the war between Google and Microsoft (and Yahoo, but they don't get a mention), Google's hardly a scrappy underdog. In fact, it has people worried about it perhaps being a monopoly or too powerful. That's something that's been going on since 2002, as my Google: Can The Marcia Brady Of Search Stay Sweet? article from back then covers in more depth.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Search Engine Watch Forums thread, Google Objects To Microsoft's IE7 Search Default Plans.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:09 AM | Permalink

April 21, 2006

eBay Wants To Team Up With Yahoo And/Or Microsoft To Compete Against Google?

A Wall Street Journal article reports that eBay is in talks with both Yahoo and Microsoft to see which one (or possibly both) is a "worthy ally" to compete against the all-mighty Google. Currently eBay spends a ton on Google AdWords, pretty much any search you do on Google, you get an ad for eBay in the sponsored results. Google also is a heavy indexer of eBay content in the organic results. This all leads to tons of referrals to eBay's content from Google. The issue is, Google is now competing with eBay on several fronts, including a PayPal alternative, online auction service and Google's other services such as Froogle and Base together lead to a huge competing e-commerce portal. Hence the need for eBay to make some changes in the future. The article at the WSJ has a nice write up with the details here.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:52 AM | Permalink

April 13, 2006

Baidu & Intel Partner On Search Apps

Last month, Google was reported as switching from Intel to AMD chips for its servers. Today, Intel China and Google's big China rival Baidu have announced their own partnership, one to cooperate on search applications for PCs and phones. Intel, Baidu to jointly develop search apps from IDG has more details. Baidu will also be using Intel processors. Let the processor wars begin! Well, hold on there. Google did cut a deal earlier this year with Intel to help promote Google Video to those with the Intel Viiv platform. Then again, who didn't partner with Intel on that?

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:03 AM | Permalink

March 28, 2006

Infospace Launches Local Search Beta; Local.com Gets Pay-Per-Call

Infospace has released a new Infospace Local Search site that's in beta. You'll find it here, with a rundown from Gary Price on features here and coverage of the deal from ClickZ in Local.com and InfoSpace Jockey for Local Search Traffic.

The ClickZ article also covers Local.com gaining pay-per-call ads.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:52 AM | Permalink

February 8, 2006

Google Testing Software Distribution With Dell, Plus Details On IE7 Search Battle

We covered last month that Google was providing personal home pages for Dell. Dell testing preinstalled Google software package from Reuters now looks at how Google is working with Dell to put Google's desktop search and toolbar on Dell computers. It's said to be a test distribution, at the moment. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal looks at that and more about the search battle shaping up within IE7.

John Battelle points to Pressuring Microsoft, PC Makers Team Up With Its Software Rivals (paid sub. required) from the Wall Street Journal, which sparked the Reuters story about Google and Dell. The WSJ article covers how Google might pay Dell fees approaching $1 billion over three years for distribution.

The story goes deeper into concerns by Yahoo and Google that the new search toolbar in Internet Explorer 7 might hurt them, since MSN would be the default. Sure, it might. Then again, MSN Search has been the default in IE since at least IE3, if I recall. Despite this, non-Microsoft search engines haven't just survived, they've thrived. Yes, IE7 sports an actual search box this time, but I still think we'll see users change this off the default setting in various ways.

There's lots of detail on Google wanting Microsoft to ask consumers to make a conscious choice about search providers, rather than IE7 automatically using their choice in IE6 (which is probably MSN Search, for most people). It's an odd argument, given that Google has not demanded that Firefox make consumers do similar choices in that browser. A partnership deal makes Google the default in Firefox, except for Asian-language versions where Yahoo cut its own deals.

Chris Sherman is planning our own look at some of these issues in the near future. I'd love to see some universal agreement about how ALL browsers should handle choices of search providers, in terms of how defaults are set and can be changed. What I fear is another round of stealth default changes, where each of the players constantly try to switch you around.

Google and Yahoo encourage you to choose them as a default search provider through their software apps. I don't mind, because I can see they are clearly asking me when this happens. Both also try to encourage you to change in other ways, as you can see here and here. Again, I don't mind, because you can understand what's going on. But a few years ago, other players would just make the changes, leaving users puzzled about why all their searches mysteriously started going through some new search engine. We don't need that again.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:39 AM | Permalink

January 30, 2006

Kanoodle Gets MSN Spaces Contextual Deal

Kanoodle has announced it will be providing contextual ads to the MSN Spaces service. What's odd about this is that MSN has their own contextual ads program apparently in the works (see here and here at JenSense). Then again, it could be that Kanoodle will serve as a stop-gap for MSN until it has its own program online, when Kanoodle might then shift to being backfill.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:52 AM | Permalink

December 11, 2005

UK: Thomson Directories and Skype Announce Partnership

How about a large local directory provider and a large VoIP service partnering and tossing in a bit of the click to call concept? Netimperative reports in Skype partners Thomson for local search that access to local directory listings from the Thomson Local Search directory/database will soon be available to users of the Skype web toolbar.

The results of the search will display three sponsored listings at the top of the page and a list of businesses down the left hand side which are then geographically displayed on a map. These business listings have been optimised for one-click calling, which means that any phone numbers shown on the results page can be called using Skype, by clicking on the Skype button.

A quick review of the Skype toolbar download page shows that the company has similar "directory" relationships in other countries. For example, in Germany Skype works with Deutsche Telecom. The Skype toolbar also provides access to results from eBay (makes sense), Ask Jeeves, and Yahoo.

Posted by Gary Price at 8:48 PM | Permalink

December 7, 2005

Infospace Calls On Ingenio for Pay Per Call Partnership

News out of San Francisco and Seattle today that InfoSpace and Ingenio have announced a partnership that will bring Ingenio's Pay Per Call technology to the entire network of Infospace properties including Dogile, MetaCrawler, WebCrawler and Infospace mobile services beginning in Q1 2006.

Mark Barach, Ingenio's Chief Marketing Officer, told Elinor Mills at News.com that customers pay on average $9 to $10 per call.

Ingenio also provides pay per call services for AOL.

From the announcement: The agreement gives Ingenio advertisers broad reach across the entire network of InfoSpace Web properties, in response to consumer search queries. Ingenio advertisers will also be able to reach mobile consumers with distribution across InfoSpace's mobile search applications. InfoSpace provides content and services to every major carrier in North America, reaching 90 percent of U.S. mobile

Complete news release here.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:52 AM | Permalink

December 1, 2005

Blinkx Announces Co-Branding Deal with The Times of London

The Times of London sure seems to be making a lot of search-related deals of late. Today, Netimperative reports that the they've signed a partnership agreement with The Times Online) to offer a co-branded version of Blinkx that utilizes Blinkx's Smart Search technology. This includes a multimedia and desktop search component as well as the ability to set-up Smart Folders and have articles of interested delivered directly to your computer. You can learn more about The Times/Blinkx deal here. It was just a week ago when we blogged about MSN Search UK powering web search on the Times Online aite. An MSN Search box is now visible on The Times web site.

BlinkTV, another part of the Blinkx service also continues to add more video content to their database including a recent announcement to make college lectures and other special presentations searchable. BlinkxTV also offers podcast search.

Posted by Gary Price at 5:17 PM | Permalink

November 30, 2005

Answers.com Now Embedded into Firefox 1.5 Search Toolbar

A quick note from Answers.com that a link to this ready-reference database is now embedded directly and automatically into the new Firefox 1.5 search toolbar. Additionally, Firefox 1.5 users can download a plug-in and have an option to search highlighted text with Answers.com via a right-click. The agreement calls for an ad-revenue split between Answers and Mozilla on Answers traffic originating from the Firefox search toolbar.

Along with these new features, Answers.com added the following content to their database today:

+ Webster's 1913 Dictionary - dictionary edited by Patrick J. Cassidy + Tips Resource Center - guidelines to help you find what you're looking for on Answers.com + Antonyms - dictionary of antonyms

Posted by Gary Price at 4:38 PM | Permalink

November 10, 2005

Yahoo China Relaunched With Pure Search Focus & New Majority Owner

Yahoo China has been acquired by Alibaba.com and relaunched as a pure search service. Here's the rundown on the changes and some reasons behind the handout, which still leaves Yahoo itself earning off the site.

Back in August, Yahoo invested $1 billion in Alibaba. That gave Yahoo a 40 percent stake in the company.

At the end of October, there was a UPI report that Alibaba bought up all the assets of Yahoo China for $1 billion. But I think that was reported backwards and working off the August announcement.

If you look at the release of the August deal, it talks of Yahoo "contributing" Yahoo China to Alibaba. So I think UPI had it wrong. This other report covers how the deal was concluded at the end of October.

Skipping ahead, via Shak's China White blog, Yahoo! China has 8 months to better Baidu or it's 'game over,' says Alibaba CEO covers the relaunch, as does Yahoo China back to search engine market found via Threadwatch.

The first article covers Alibaba feeling they've got about a year to have a chance in search in China and how the more pure search site will also focus on financial news, entertainment and sports. And political news?

I don't want to get into trouble with the government, so I don't do any political news," said Ma. China requires special certification to publish political news.

It's not all abandoning portal features, however. Email is also being kept, as that's seen as a key portal feature that can't go away.

Yahoo's Jeremy Zawodny who is in Taiwan, heard about the move from his cab driver and was surprised to see that Yahoo China has gained an MP3 search tab.

No surprise, really. China's most popular search engine, Baidu, has built its popularity on music search -- or some would say illegal downloads -- as I covered in my Google's China Situation Better Than You Might Think -- And Other China Search News post. The question really is, will the new Yahoo China feature music content but not get into the same trouble Baidu's had with music companies.

I took a fast look to see if I could find any pirated songs, but needing to log into a Yahoo China account lost me, I'm afraid. If you have to log in, I'm guessing pirated music is less likely.

Finally, doesn't it seem odd for Yahoo to be handing over Yahoo China to another company when just this week, it bought out control of Yahoo UK, Germany, France and Korea from Softbank?

Nah. I'm guessing it's a handy way for Yahoo to profit off of China but get free of all those pesky complaints that Yahoo bends to China's will on political issues. Hey, we didn't hand that email over to the Chinese government. We didn't censor those news results. We didn't filter those search results. Alibaba did -- take it up with them! Yet by owning a stake in Alibaba, Yahoo can earn money of the search business.

As a reminder, Google owns a stake in four percent stake of Baidu. That gives it a bit of a hedge in case Google China doesn't work or the entire Yahoo keeping your distance situation -- if I'm reading that situation right -- looks worthwhile to follow.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:17 AM | Permalink

Travel Search Player SideStep and Amazon.com Announce Partnership

Over at Clickz, Pam Parker reports on a new partnership between Amazon.com and travel search aggregator, SideStep in the article: Amazon, SideStep Partner for Travel Search.

Parker reports that Sidestep will be a co-branded section of the Amazon Travel Store. The co-branded site will go live "early next year." At the moment, Amazon's Travel Store uses results from Hotwire.

It's not clear whether SideStep is paying Amazon for the exposure or whether the two have a revenue-sharing arrangement. Neither company would disclose financial details or the duration of the agreement.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:13 AM | Permalink

September 29, 2005

Infospace & Seekport Announce Partnership as InfoSpace President Leaves Company

Netimperative reports that European engine Seekport and Infospace will partner. The partnership will have Infospace providing paid listings on Seekport results pages.

This has been a busy week for InfoSpace news. On Monday, we blogged about a new mobile search tool that InfoSpace plans to launch in October. Then, on Tuesday, we learned that Kathleen Rae, president and chief operating officer of InfoSpace, will be retiring from the company.

Posted by Gary Price at 2:24 PM | Permalink

September 15, 2005

Microsoft Talks To Time Warner About Acquiring a Piece of AOL

Via a post in our forums, we learn of a NY Post article: AOL's Time May Be Up, about Microsoft talking with Time Warner about about acquiring a piece of AOL.

Under the plan being considered, Microsoft would pay some money to Time Warner for the AOL stake, leaving the two companies approximately equal partners in the venture.

The article also says that AOL has also talked with Google and Yahoo about acquiring part of the service.

Of course, a partnership between MS and TW/AOL would likely have implications for Google. Why? Google ads are visible on AOL Search results pages. Google could/would loose eyeballs if AOL begins showing advertising from MSN's soon to launch AdCenter service. For site owners, an implication is also that AOL's Google-powered results would be replaced by MSN's own crawler results.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:17 PM | Permalink

September 8, 2005

Miva Partners To Give Mirror Group Contextual Ads

Miva has signed a deal to provide contextual ads to the Mirror Group Newspapers, which includes the Daily Mirror, The Sunday Mirror, The People, The Sunday Mail and The Daily Record. The release isn't up on the Miva site yet, so I'll paste what I received below. There's no mention that search targeted ads will also be shown.

London, UK 8 September 2005, MIVA, Inc., (NASDAQ: MIVA) the leading independent Performance Marketing Network, today announced the signing of an exclusive content deal with MGN Ltd (Mirror Group Newspapers).

The appointment, which follows a competitive pitch, will see MIVA provide relevant and targeted Pay-Per-Click Ads across the home, article and channel pages of the following MGN sites:

- Daily Mirror www.mirror.co.uk

- Sunday Mirror www.sundaymirror.co.uk

- The People www.people.co.uk

- Sunday Mail www.sundaymail.co.uk

- Daily Record www.dailyrecord.co.uk

Under the terms of the deal, MIVA's design team will develop fully customised implementations that will be integrated within the five MGN sites. MIVA's top three, content driven Pay-Per-Click Ads will be displayed on each page, with advertisers selected according to their current ranking in MIVA's real-time online auction.

"MIVA demonstrated a thorough understanding of our market and the benefits content-driven listings can have on both revenue and the perception of our individual brands amongst internet users," commented Julia Smith, MGN's Head of Digital. "MIVA's flexibility, in terms of its customised design solutions, editorially-led approach and the way it structures deals really stands it apart from the competition," she continued.

"We're delighted to have formed a partnership with a publisher as prestigious as MGN," commented Seb Bishop, Director and Chief Marketing Officer, MIVA. "The company's focus on combining branding and user experience with revenue generation fits perfectly with MIVA's philosophy and will ensure that the listings we provide benefit partner, advertiser and user alike," he continued.

MGN is a key addition to MIVA's network of partner sites. In July this year, the sites for the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, The People, Daily Record and Sunday Mail attracted nearly three million unique users and almost twenty million page impressions*. MGN is currently redesigning its stable of sites to create a more consistent look and feel. In the four months since unveiling the redesigned www.mirror.co.uk site, users have increased by 79 per cent*.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:01 AM | Permalink

August 11, 2005

Answers.com and Opera Announce Partnership

According to a News.com story and this news release, access to the Answers.com database will be built into the Opera web browser toolbar. The companies will share revenue generated by users visiting co-branded content pages.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:45 PM | Permalink

July 28, 2005

Yahoo Partners With ITV & Rounding Up TV Search Partners In The UK

News from Yahoo that ITV -- on of the UK's major television channels -- will be featuring Yahoo search results, search ads and contextual ads on its site. At the moment, search listings appear to come from Miva -- the former Espotting.

FYI, Yahoo also has a presence with the BBC, which operates the UK's two most popular terrestrial (broadcast over the air) channels. That's Yahoo's search technology under the hood over at the BBC, or at least that's been the situation for some time. Paid inclusion is stripped out, and there are no ads (this is the BBC, after all) and the ranking algorithm gets tweaked.

A Day In The Life Of BBCi Search from Martin Belam is an older (2003) look at the service but still a good read. I haven't heard that Yahoo's been replaced, and I was just up at the BBC about three months ago, so I think things are still going along as before. Check out Martin's more recent posts on search and the BBC, as well.

How about Channel 4, the other major UK broadcast channel. No web search at all, it seems. To busy doing Big Brother edition 201 to think about it, I supposed. Well, no doubt Yahoo and Google will stumble over themselves to swoop in soon.

That leaves five, the last major UK channel that never has anything worth watching other than the occasional good cartoon in Milkshake. The all-graphic home page has no search box and digging in further shows nothing.

Now Sky, there's a much more major network than five, especially in bringing me US imports only a few months after they show in the US (and we got Battlestar Galactica first, yeah!). That's all on Sky 1, which lots of people take -- but Sky runs a number of other channels plus the UK's most popular satellite TV system. Search partner on the Sky web site? Nada that I see. Someone make Rupert an offer!

Finally, once again I have no luck finding the actual Yahoo press release of the news online, so I'll cut and paste below. All PR people everywhere. Put the release online! And send a URL to the online version as part of the release you send. Yahoo's far from the online one at fault like this.

ITV INTEGRATES YAHOO! SEARCH ON ITV.COM

Yahoo! provides a suite of its award winning search technology, alongside search monetisation products from it?s Overture subsidiary

London, July 28, 2005 ? Yahoo! UK & Ireland Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO), today announced an agreement with ITV, the UK?s biggest commercial television network to provide search technology, sponsored search and contextual advertising on ITV.com.

ITV.com users visiting sites such as itv.com/soaps, itv.com/motor, itv.com/football, dedicated programming websites for I?m A Celebrity?Get Me Out Of Here! along with other sites within ITV Online?s portfolio will benefit from a Yahoo! Search box at the top of each page on the website. Visitors to the site will be able to search the wealth of content within the ITV.com website or extend their search to include the World Wide Web, including image, video and news content.

In addition to Yahoo?s Search box, the site will also display Overture?s sponsored search listings on both the search results page and throughout the ITV.com site as contextual advertising.

?We are pleased to be working with ITV, one of the UK?s biggest media properties,? said Rob Jonas, Head of Business Development, Yahoo! Search, UK & Ireland. ?This agreement demonstrates the growing strength of our search technology, as well as our commitment to work with partners to deliver compelling search user experiences. This should be the first of what we hope will be many agreements with popular online properties.?

Commenting on the deal, Jeremy Rosenberg, Online Sales Account Manager at ITV Sales said: ?The ITV integrated search partnership with Yahoo is the first time ITV.com has fully embraced all elements of search functionalities. The integrated approach will be setup within the look and feel of each ITV section and searches will be tailored to our user profile and habits to ensure optimisation and relevancy. ITV are looking forward to building the partnership with Yahoo and to look at other opportunities.?

In addition, Yahoo! will also include all of ITV.com?s diverse and continually changing online content through its content acquisition programme. This will ensure that Yahoo! UK & Ireland users will benefit by being able to easily find, for example, comprehensive online information about their favourite TV programmes from Coronation Street to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

Notes to editor:

Content Match is Overture?s contextual advertising product that embeds relevant search results on content-based pages, featuring sponsored search listings generated by the company?s growing worldwide base of 100,000 advertisers.

Yahoo! Search recently won two awards from Search Engine Watch for outstanding search service and best image search.
Yahoo! Search is focused on providing innovative, useful technologies that enable people to find, use, share, and expand knowledge.

About Yahoo! UK & Ireland

Yahoo! UK & Ireland is a subsidiary of Yahoo! Inc., the No. 1 Internet brand globally and the most trafficked internet destination worldwide. Yahoo! provides online products and services essential to consumers' lives, and offers a full range of tools and marketing solutions for businesses to connect with Internet users around the world. Yahoo! is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif. Yahoo!'s global network includes 20 world properties and is available in 15 languages.

About ITV Sales

ITV Sales is dedicated to adding value to the 30-second spot proposition by delivering unique advertising solutions for its customers. Opportunities include broadcast sponsorship, branded content, online advertising, text services, interactive advertising, ?advertainment? and off-air marketing such as merchandising and licensing.

ITV Sales sells television airtime and programme sponsorship on behalf of all the ITV1 regions as well as ITV2, ITV3, ITV News Channel, Men & Motors and Irish terrestrial channel TV3. It also sells online sponsorship and digital media for ITV?s online properties as well as interactive TV opportunities.

About Overture

Overture Services, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Yahoo! Inc., offers essential marketing services for companies doing business online. The company's search-based products and tools help businesses connect with highly motivated customers. Overture is based in Pasadena, California with U.S. offices in New York, Chicago and San Mateo, CA. The headquarters for Overture's non-U.S. business is in Ireland, with offices across Europe, Asia, Australia and South-America. For more information about Overture, visit www.uk.overture.com. Overture is a service mark of Overture Services, Inc.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:11 AM | Permalink

June 21, 2005

Answers Partners With IceRocket

The increasingly popular vertical engine Answers.com has just announced a partnership with IceRocket. According to the news release, IceRocket will send visitors to Answers.com for reference material and Answers.com send "blog search" traffic to IceRocket. Answers.com will earn a slice of any revenues generated by referral traffic.

I'm assuming this means Answers.com will soon provide a "blog" search tab on their home page that will be powered with results from IceRocket. This is would be similar to what Answers.com is now doing with Shopping.com.

Answers.com integrates Google Web Search and AdSense on their site. About six months ago, Answers.com began providing dictionary definitions and related info to Google.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:23 PM | Permalink

June 3, 2005

Forbes Announces Deal With Search Vertical IT.com

Media Post has a short article today about Forbes.com users now having access to search vertical IT.com directly from search boxes located on the Forbes site.

IT.com uses a targeted crawler to build a database focusing only on information technology solutions for the enterprise.

Although placing search boxes to specialty/vertical databases on non-search sites like Forbes is not a new concept, it's still a good one since it can help get the word out about these types of search tools.

In an email to me, Mark Conover the IT.com CEOwrote:

The top priority [for IT.com] is to provide the most relevant results for PARTICULAR audience being served.

He added:

It just so happens that the algorithm is "ungamable".

As I touched on earlier this week, just because content can be crawled and searched doesn't mean the searcher will see it. Use of a vertical/focused database can often help the user get the most relevant results in the shortest amount of time. Said in different words, the biggest database (in terms of overall size) doesn't mean it's the best database for every search. Conover is also correct in pointing out that verticals can also offer quality results by focusing on the needs of a specific user group.

With the increasing interest in verticals, I think more and more people are realizing that specialty engines are valuable and useful resources.

Posted by Gary Price at 9:24 AM | Permalink

June 1, 2005

Kayak.com Travel Search Coming to About.com

Kayak.com, the travel metasearch/comparison engine, has announced a deal with About.com to become About's "premier booking partner" and will provide access to their service on the About.com About.com travel and cities and towns channels.

More about the new Kayak/About relationship in this EyeforTravel.com story. I've liked and used Kayak.com, since it launched in beta last year. In February, Kayak left beta and announced a paid listings service. Kayak.com technology also powers AOL's new PinpointTravel travel search site.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:03 AM | Permalink

May 10, 2005

Agreement Brings Product Info from Shopping.com to Answers.com

Word in this press release that Answers.com and Shopping.com have announced a partnership that will bring content from the shopping comparison engine to Answers.com pages.

Under the agreement, Answers.com will display product information from Shopping.com as a supplement to its content library. For instance, looking up "LCD Projector" on Answers.com will now provide - beyond the Answers.com complete explanation about the device and its technology - detailed information necessary for users to decide whether and where to buy a product, including access to product descriptions, reviews, and comparisons of merchant prices. Answers.com will receive a portion of revenues generated when consumers click through to merchants' sites.

Look for Shopping.com content to begin appearing on Answers.com this summer.

In other Shopping.com news...

I noticed that the Shopping.com now offers a mortgage rate comparison database for all 50 states. The service launched in beta about a week ago.

Shopping.com Mortgages allows consumers to shop for mortgages with the same detailed level of associated attributes; customized search; and structured, intuitive presentation previously available only in consumer products and unprecedented in financial services. At the beta launch, consumers have access to, and can compare rates from, multiple credible lenders with representation in all 50 states. Attributes by which consumers can customize the search and presentation of offers include, among others, loan type, points, loan amount, lender's regional profile, monthly payments, closing costs, and down payment requirements.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:13 AM | Permalink

April 18, 2005

MSN Results Coming to InfoSpace Sites

InfoSpace is announcing that they've just inked a two-year deal with Microsoft to add MSN web search results to both their branded metasearch sites (Dogpile, Metacrawler) and their private label search offerings. I just ran a few searches with both engines and it looks like MSN results haven't been added to the mix yet. InfoSpace also has deals in place with Google, Yahoo, and Ask Jeeves.

We've also learned that a new version of Dogpile will be going live at the beginning of May.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:25 PM | Permalink

February 9, 2005

Kayak Travel Site Leaves Beta, Launches Paid Listings

Kayak is a travel search site that went up in beta back in October, as Gary covered more here: New Travel Search: Take a Trip with Kayak. It officially left beta yesterday and announced (link to Word document press release) that it would do a cobranded travel search deal with USA Today. It already has a partnership to do the same for AOL. The company also launched a paid listings program for its results, as covered more in this ClickZ article: Kayak.com Launches Beta of Ad Bidding Engine. A self-serve system isn't up yet, but contact details on starting are here.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:05 AM | Permalink

February 4, 2005

GoFish Multimedia Shopping Search: IceRocket Deal & Closer Look

Multimedia shopping search engine GoFish gained its first significant partnership this week, now providing the multimedia results for meta search engine IceRocket (this PDF press release has more details). Significant is a relative term, of course -- while IceRocket counts billionaire Mark Cuban as an investor, it has practically no usage or brand reach compared to one of the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo or even Ask Jeeves.

How about some more about GoFish? We've covered it briefly here, GoFish For Meta Music Searching, but I took a closer look for this post. On the site, you'll find Audio, Video, Mobile and Games tabs. Going in turn:

Audio: Dominated mostly by bringing back matches for online music stores or audio book information. Who are the providers? GoFish didn't provide a list as requested. Looking at the site, Napster, MusicMatch, iTunes and Buy.com are just some of the music partners I've spotted. There may be many more -- and a list explaining exactly what GoFish taps into would be very useful. Audio book listings seem to come from Audible.

In short, this seems like a nice way to meta search for music you may want to buy. For example, here's a range of options for purchasing Aimee Mann's I'm With Stupid album. But when it comes to buying individual songs, choice might get more restricted, as this example for Long Shot from that same album shows.

Video: Searches here seem to be dominated by places where you can buy DVDs online, so it feels like more of a DVD shopping search engine. But some multimedia videos that can be purchased are also shown.

The key thing is, unlike a Yahoo Video or AOL's Singingfish, the content here is not originally crawled nor for free. This is more a meta search for places where you can buy video content. What would be cool is if it did meta search of some of the many free video search sites that are out there. Gary has a roundup of these here: A Look At Other Video Search Tools.

Mobile: Ringtones, wallpaper, games for your mobile or cell phone -- searching here brings back matching results. So if I want the Thunderbirds theme for my phone? Here are matching results. And as with audio and video, the results are from places where I can purchase the content, not get it for free.

Games: Like the other categories, do a search here and you'll get back matching computer game products from various vendors for sale.

In the end, calling GoFish a multimedia meta search site would be a misnomer. This is a shopping site for multimedia search -- and very promising, if you're looking to purchase that type of content. I'd like to see a list of all the providers it taps into, or at least a sampling of major partners.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:10 AM | Permalink

December 21, 2004

Shopping: About.com and PriceGrabber.com Announce Partnership

Word that About.com and PriceGrabber.com have announced a partnership. Access to the shopping database is now integrated into the About.com site.

The news release mentions that the new partnership is "exclusive." Hmm. PriceGrabber.com currently powers the shopping search on other sites including Ask Jeeves, PCWorld, and MSN Latino.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:08 PM | Permalink

November 4, 2004

UpSNAP and Looksmart Announce Partnership

UpSNAP, the SMS-based search tool Chris wrote about last month has announced a partnership with Looksmart.

The company [UpSNAP] will offer its customers a new way to extend their reach off-line and directly to consumers via text-enabled cell phones under a pay-per-click/call model...Until today, consumers had to pay to find merchants in the cellular world," said Tony Philipp, President and CEO of UpSNAP!. "UpSNAP! reverses this model. Consumers can contact merchants for free, and local merchants can now take advantage of a performance-driven advertising model even without a web presence. LookSmart, with its large base of advertisers and flexible paid listings platform, was the obvious partner to work with to power this advertising service...For the first time, advertisers have a performance-based revenue model via text-messaging on cellular telephones.

The complete news release is available here.

Posted by Gary Price at 9:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Topix.net and Citysearch Announce Partnership

Topix.net (a news resource I utilize several times each day) and Citysearch are announcing a deal today that will bring news headlines from Topix.net to 40 local Citysearch guides AND feature advertising from the Citysearch ad network (32,500 advertisers) on Topix.net's (32,000+) local news pages.

The partnership should be integrated into their respective sites by the end of 2004.

Topix.net appears to be on a roll. In the past few months they've announced deals with: + Ask Jeeves + Yahoo Local news RSS feeds for My Yahoo + Info.com

More in the Clickz story: Topix, Citysearch Team for Local Content

Posted by Gary Price at 8:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 16, 2004

FindWhat Announces New Distribution Deal

>From the announcement, "Under the terms of the exclusive distribution agreement, FindWhat.com will supply Bizjournals.com and each of its 41 local metropolitan business news websites (like San Francisco, Atlanta and Boston) with targeted keyword advertisements (paid listings) through both search box and content matching implementations. The advertisements appearing after a search will match the location of each local Bizjournals.com website and include FindWhat.com's new pay-per-call advertisements."

Posted by Gary Price at 2:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

See More Posts From:

This Week | This Month

Legal Notices, Licensing, Reprints & Permissions

Privacy Policy
Affiliates

var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-564586-7"); pageTracker._setDomainName(".searchenginewatch.com"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); window.collarity_appid = "incmedia"; //> //>

Top Jobs

more Jobs

Senior Digital Planner
U.S. International Media Los Angeles, United States

Senior Search Analyst
U.S. International Media Los Angeles, United States New York, United States

Webmaster - Marketing
West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine Lewisburg, United States

Web Marketing Manager
Harvard Business Publishing Watertown, United States

White Papers

more Research