• by August 1, 2000

Search engines are a mess. Site designers bend over backwards to include every possible keyword to score preferred placement while users have to wade through thousands of entries. Nevertheless, a huge percentage of web users do turn to search engines to find your dot-com clients and maybe search engines should be included in your media plan. Pay for search engine placement, you ask? Well, bid for it, actually. Whether or not the following concept will survive the test of dot-com time remains to be seen, but a recently- launched search engine, Win4Win, is hoping to make it by having websites bid in an open auction for results placement that are relevant to their sites and services offered.

Win4Win officials say the concept itself is something of a hybrid. It mixes the pay-per-click pricing model concept and affiliate programs with the search engine interface. For advertisers, that could mean tighter targeting; for users, more relevant answers. Because websites pay only for the traffic that actually clicks its way to their site, the site owner has an incentive to bid for placement only on search terms where the site would meet the user's needs -- or else it's money thrown away. The company's new search service called "intellisearcher" helps the web surfer automatically find terms that are closely related to what they are searching.

Reviews? The site is fast on its way to delivering 10 million searches a month and as eSTARTUP analyst Terry Rogers says "If Win4Win can monetize traffic flows and cut down on clutter at the same time, then it's got a winner on its hands."

We'll keep you posted.