Search: The Trends: "Overture is developing what Geoff Stevens, general manager of local search, terms 'radius based keywords.' Radii vary, based on region. "
This past week, Yahoo! and Overture changed their paid-inclusion program; Ask Jeeves dropped its XML paid inclusion and dropped $343 million on Interactive Search Holdings.
Last year, search was the number two online activity, after e-mail. The industry is growing, dollar-wise, by roughly 30 percent this year alone (depending on who you listen to). The Kelsey Group recently estimated local search alone will be a $2.5 billion industry by 2008.
Search as a marketing tool is anything but sorted out...Tim Armstrong, Google's vice president of advertising, told me, "Ninety percent of the technology hasn't even been developed yet"
Local: Sukinder Singh, Stevens' counterpart at Google, hinted her company will look to partner with local publishers and provide them with local search results...optimize for local search now. Does you site contain and buy keywords containing regional information such as city, state, Zip Code, and area code? If not, start there.
Professionalisation: SEMPO's European members launched E-SEMA (European Search Engine Marketing Alliance), which will be affiliated with its American counterpart. This means better standards, training, knowledge, and transparency for what's become a bona fide and burgeoning industry.
posted by Jen @ 7:45 AM
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