• by Seana Mulcahy , March 3, 2003

Something funny happened to me recently. I got a strange email via a free service from an old college buddy I lost touch with years ago. She wrote her name in the subject line of the email (if she hadn’t I would have deleted the message without reading it), and her email asked me a few questions. When I replied back, “Oh my gosh! Yes, it is me!” I got a response from her real email address. We’ve been in touch ever since. Later, when I asked how she found me, she simply said, “I Googled you.”

"Googling" has become a widely used word for the act of searching online - put just about any name in quotation marks and poof, you’ve found ‘em. Search is the second most popular online activity next to emailing, and search engines like Google have made popularity the method of choice (three quarters of all online searches use Google or sites that use Google's search results, according to WebSideStory Inc.)

The sometimes-confusing world of search is compelling as it brings qualified traffic to our clients’ websites. Search engine marketing is multi-faceted. There’s Paid Placement, which can also be called search, keyword search or pay-per-click (PPC). Advertisers write ad listings and bid to get the top spot in results. There’s Paid Inclusion -- guess what, it too can be dubbed keyword search. Advertisers pay the engine to visit their sites more often. And, there’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO) -- companies build and optimize site content and architecture in order to garner rankings within a given set of keywords/phrases. This has been a wildly popular service provided by agencies and website firms.

Here are some more stats. According to DoubleClick’s Spring 2002 Marketing Spending Index, SEO was almost as popular as the use of banner ads as the most used online vehicle. Keyword search fell shortly behind. As most of all online advertising struggled since 2000, search remained consistent. Overture reports a 40%-plus ROI for these keyword search offerings, while Google claims clients are able to convert visitors to buyers 50% more frequently than with traditional media buys. Almost 200 million Internet searches are conducted daily.

Its no wonder folks like us have jumped all over it.

So what’s up with search? The market is getting more and more competitive. Just in the past week or two, Google, Overture, and Yahoo have made some pretty big announcements.

Overture bought AltaVista last week for $140 million. In addition, the company plans to acquire Norwegian Fast Search and Transfer (AlltheWeb.com and its PartnerSite). Both Fast and AltaVista use search engines to crawl the web and produce relevant result based on the users’ query. Overture says the acquisitions will most likely yield revenue of $1B USD by year’s end.

Yahoo recently acquired Inktomi in a deal worth up to $235 million whereas Google announced the acquisition of Pyra Labs, the creators of Blogger. Google has also begun to roll out a new extension of its Google AdWords program named Google Content-Targeted Advertising(tm). Ads will appear within content pages in addition to search pages.

So what does this mean for advertisers? Is search evolving? Here are some tips to help you out:

- Search is cheap but don’t waste time on bidding wars.

- Search isn’t a great stand-alone vehicle. It yields better results in conjunction with other programs that can give your brand a lift.

- Paid inclusion cannot guarantee your listings will always be in search results.

- Marketers can track success real-time with any form of search engine marketing.

- Controlling cost per lead (CPL) ultimately yields higher ROI.

- It’s easy to experiment with words and phrases.

- It is important to be creative with selected words. Wearing the hat of the consumer will help with the mindset in which they search.

- Snoop around. See what your competition has first. Words can get costly.

- Clutter is just as abundant in search as it is in online advertising.

Seems like nowadays we are all forced to quantify, justify, and optimize just about everything related to online advertising. Because of this, have we gotten caught up in search? Has it become the easy out? I think it’s simply Googlelicious.