Search Engine News
Overture to Acquire FAST’s AllTheWeb.com
The consolidation of the search engine world continues at a staggering pace. Just days after Pay Per Click giant Overture bought AltaVista, they announced plans to acquire the Web Search Unit of Fast Search & Transfer.
The AV purchase seems to have 2 major themes. First, AV used to be the undisputed heavyweight champ of search. Over the last 3 years, their marketshare & quality of results have dropped in almost direct proportion to the rise of Google. What remains is potentially valuable brand recognition and not much traffic. Second, AV has been serving Overture ads for a couple years.
The FAST acquisition mainly gets Overture the technology and website of AllTheWeb.com. Most SE experts have been impressed at ATW’s technology and impressive results for the last year or more. Speculation has been that ATW had the foundation to compete with Google. The problem was their low marketshare and almost non existant brand recognition made any significant “competition” a long shot. ATW also serves Overture PPC ads.
So what’s all this mean?
Why did Overture do this?
First, Overture is consolidating it’s revenue chain. PPC has been one of the few clear success stories of web advertising. With these acquisitions, Overture gains full control of two significant partners. They’re free to keep more of the PPC revenue than they were in a revenue sharing deal. This in itself could recoup the $200 million-ish that Overture has spent on these deals. With the long term uncertainty of Overture partners Yahoo & MSN, the moves make sense to guarantee control of Overture outlets. Most industry observers expect Yahoo to create their own PPC program to replace Overture at some point. Also, both Yahoo & MSN are in multiyear deals with Overture so immediate repurcussions are minimized from Overture’s largest streams.
Second, Overture has reduced the options for other companies which effectively makes them a bigger player. There were only 6 SE’s that had decent crawler technology: Inktomi (controlled by Yahoo), WiseNut (controlled by LookSmart), Teoma (AskJeeves) and Google. ATW-FAST & AltaVista are the others.
Overlay this with the 4 major players on the web. Yahoo is set with Ink, AOL uses Google and Google uses Google. That leaves MSN. Basically, MSN usues Overture for PPC and Inktomi for spider based “backfill” results. If MSN wants to improve their search capabilities their options have been reduced significantly in the last couple months. Overture’s moves may make them an attractive target for MSN as an exclusive partner (better revenue deal for Overture than current) or as a takeover target.
Third, without quality search results, you simply can’t draw traffic. AV has the name recognition, ATW has the technology. By combining the 2, Overture may just have a reasonanble alternative to Google’s results. More relevant results mean more traffic. More traffic means more PPC revenue for Overture.
What’s this mean to website owners/webmaster?
Fewer players could mean that it’s easier to know how to promote your site. However, Google has been accounting for the *vast* majority of traffic to most sites. For the past year, a focus on just Google was enough to bring in a ton of qualified traffic at most sites. If there is serious competition to Google, the potential need for additional non-Google promotion work is quite real. To effectively target multiple SE’s, you’ll have to do more work to bring in the same amount of traffic.
Expect interent promotion costs to rise. Overture recently increased their minimum bid from 5 cents to 10 cents. Don’t be surprised if you see this again as they grow their marketshare. Traditional search engine optimization (SEO) costs will rise as well since more work will be required to gain the previous results.
What’s left?
What will MSN do?
Will Google still offer an IPO?
Will Google offer PFI (pay for inclusion)?
Will AOL jump into the frenzy and buy a search technology before they’re all gone?
It’s an exciting time. Stay tuned.
If you’re interested in getting targeted traffic from the search engines, you have to stay on top of the changes that can affect your bottom line. 2theTop stays on top of these changes so that you can do what you do best instead of spending hours every day keeping up with the search engines. Don’t risk the success of your online opportunity. Make sure you get 2 the Top!
Our web site promotion packages are custom tailored to get the results you need from your web site. 2 the Top can put the search engines to work for you.
If you’re interested in getting targeted traffic from the search engines, you have to stay on top of the changes that can affect your bottom line. 2theTop stays on top of these changes so that you can do what you do best instead of spending hours every day keeping up with the search engines. Don’t risk the success of your online opportunity. Make sure you get 2 the Top!
Our web site promotion packages are custom tailored to get the results you need from your web site. 2 the Top can put the search engines to work for you.
Contact us for more information or to speak with a representative:
2 the Top Web Site Design & Promotion