Posted on: February 11, 2008 by Syzlak
Others cry while Syzlak emulates Oregonian style headline
Microsoft has decided to reiterate that their offer to buy Yahoo! was fair, and is not removing the offer from the table. More to come as we watch this play out.
I know that Steve and I made joke posts (Steve’s idea) last week in response to Microsoft’s initial offer, but as the future of search and a company that I respect are involved we’re going to try to stay serious at Syzlak’s and cover this as true journalists: with integrity and respect.
…actually I just couldn’t find a pic where the Microsoft logo was giving it to the Yahoo! logo
Edit: Thanks Nate!
Posted on: January 15, 2008 by Syzlak
All week I had waited for a package from Amazon. I had ordered the FLCL Ultimate Edition DVD box set, and was on pins and needles in anticipation for the day it would arrive. As it turned out, the package arrived the day after a very ominously thin package from MSN arrived…
Good heavens! What sort of magic could be in this wonderful box???? I mean shit. You’d have to have some sort of magic to make me more attractive to millions of shoppers. I’m a damn fine looking man. Don’t believe me? I can look good eating a cheeseburger.
So, what’s in this box?
Yep, a piece of Styrofoam and a small brochure. Aces!
Lord, really? So, what am I looking at, exactly? Apparently, a “Search Marketing Guide.” Usually, we put these sorts of things on the Web, but I suppose if you’re MSN, that’s just too difficult. Upon further inspection I learn that I’ll be getting tips from “Search Master Steve”
in order to make my business more attractive and “get the most out of adCenter”
Seriously, if anybody out there knows how to get the most out of nothing, please fill me and the rest of the fucking world in on your secret. Also, I find it very hard to believe that with all of Microsoft’s black helicopters, they weren’t able to figure out just how goddamned attractive I already am. Did you really think that Search Master Steve looks better than me? And while I have a minute, how did that guy master search? He can’t even master a comb.
Overheard in an ad exec meeting at MSN:
Ad Exec 1: We need to sell our adCenter product to search marketers that are already signed up with adCenter
Ad Exec 2: Get that guy who looks like the Verizon guy! Utility nerds are so handsome and unassuming!
So what other nuggets of wisdom are found in this manual?
Well, there’s the importance of spelling, 
and the ultra backasswards way that adCenter chooses to use keyword implementation.
Has anyone ever tried to use this? There’s no code for automatic capitalization as there is in Yahoo and Google and they allow you to have something like 3 parameters in addition to the keyword (for sales, shipping discounts, etc.) . While the parameters are a good idea and have come in handy once or twice, all of their codes are very cumbersome and most of us have our own tricks that are much faster than using MSN’s built in tools.
So what have we learned?
- MSN does not research their market
- MSN puts together really stupid booklets
- I can remember to bring my camera to work, but consistently forget to stop drinking before eating cheeseburgers
Posted on: October 1, 2007 by Syzlak
Hey Reader!
Remember that post on 3rd Tier Search i did a while back? Well, here’s a short writeup on the results! Nothing unexpected happened, as the search engines were held well in check.
3rd Tier Search Review
The Players: Enhance, Miva and ABCSearch.
Metrics: Cost Efficiency, Traffic and ROI.
From our test we have been able to gather some interesting teachings on cost efficiency and traffic. When properly controlled, 3rd tier search engines are a relatively cheap source of traffic. Their limited scope helps to keep costs down, while providing an alternative to the mainstream online audience (Google, Yahoo).
After examining the traffic, we see some encouraging trends. The 3rd tier engines performed as we wanted. They delivered low volume of traffic and we incurred no spikes in traffic. Although we cannot analyze the traffic with 100% accuracy, we can make some assumptions as to its quality. Since we did not see any spikes in traffic, we can assume that the engines delivered the results to qualified sites. We can also assume that the traffic was legitimate, as we saw what appeared to be quality website referrals.
While none of the campaigns resulted in conversions, we can see the potential of employing a properly managed campaign on 3rd tier engines. With such little traffic being delivered and little cost incurred, a strong ROI would be easily achieved with just a few sales.
3rd tier search engines offer a distinct opportunity for branding campaigns. Due to their alternate audience, 3rd tier search offers the ability to expand the online market. Instead of competing for position on Google and Yahoo, one can be a top advertiser in 3rd tier engines.
While we only received nominal amounts of traffic from Enhance, our campaigns in Miva were rather successful from a traffic standpoint. Miva slowly increased its traffic share over the course of 13 weeks, and has recently performed at a consistent level of roughly 4 visits/day. As we will not continue to advertise on the 3rd tier engines after this test has run its course ($150 budget depletion), we have raised our bids in Miva and Enhance for further testing.
Posted on: August 16, 2007 by Syzlak
Since i’m too busy to post new content, here’s a throwback from the blogger days…
Understanding Search Engines
Many people will tell you that a 2nd or 3rd tier SE is just as good as a 1st tier engine, except it’s missing the “big name advertisers,” has cheaper traffic, fewer visits, etc. In reality, the idea behind the tiers is more directly related to the distribution networks and partners, than it is their revenue, advertisers or efficiency. To some degree, many people will tell you that MSN & ASK are in reality 2nd tier engines, due to their limited distribution networks (ASK only delivers results to Lycos, HotBot and iwon Search, whereas MSN delivers to HotBot only). Google delivers search results and paid results to 6 major 2nd tier engines, including ASK.com. Yahoo delivers to 2 major 2nd tier engines (alltheweb and AltaVista).
Common Concerns
So why does this matter? Well, after all these well known SEs we have the 3rd tier. Here lies everyone else, from LookSmart to Miva, Enhance to ABCSearch. These SEs are the ones that make audacious claims such as:
>Our search engine will increase your traffic by 200%
>Our conversion rate is 20% higher than Google Adwords
>Our cost-per-click across the board is 25% lower than Adwords
While, some of these engines do offer a cheaper source of traffic than Google or Yahoo, often times the traffic is not as relevant as the 1st tier engines. This concept is what makes these engines truly 3rd tier – they don’t have the same network as Google or Yahoo. As Google and Yahoo (even MSN) have taken the main distribution sites away from other SEs, 3rd tier engines are left with affiliate sites, poorly organized local search and an odd collection of SEs that don’t even qualify for 3rd tier. Those who have been maintaining high traffic quality are definitely not providing high traffic volume and great reach in search network distribution.
The final issue of concern that I’d like to bring into the conversation is that of click fraud (or if we’d like a happier term click abundance). Many times these 3rd tier engines do offer a cheaper CPC, do increase traffic by 200% and do provide results right away. The problem is, that sometimes all 3 of these things happen in a short amount of time, as a SEW member found out when attempting to run ads on Kanoodle.
Recently, 3rd tier engines have been trying desparately to clean up possible click fraud. For example, Enhance recently beefed up their ability to protect the advertiser from false clicks. Hopefully, we’ll see more engines expanding their technology to achieve similar goals.
Personal Experience
From my own experiences, I have a rather mixed perception on 3rd tier engine effectiveness. I have had campaigns nearly destroyed by unqualified (spam) traffic that was directly traced back to 3rd tier engines (the most frequent offenders were LookSmart and Mamma). However, I’ve also had some limited low-impact success from up and coming SEs, Miva and Enhance.
Recommendation
When kept at a low volume, 3rd tier engines offer a great source for supplemental traffic, if one is trying to grow a campaign or brand. However, if a campaign is focused on specific metrics, 3rd tier engines carry the adept ability to disrupt progress for a campaign. In light of all of these concerns, I don’t think one should avoid 3rd tier engines, but remain skeptical.
More References:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum85/537.htm
