What's the difference in the top Search Engines (Yahoo!, Excite, Lycos and the like) if they
list the same sites as the top or preferred listings? Not much!
At the time this article was written (4/13/03) we performed a search
on the 3 search engines mentioned above for the keyword 'car' and
here are the first links that we found on all 3 search engines:
www.invoicedealers.com
www.automotive.com
www.buyingadvice.com
Let's not jump to conclusions, Yahoo! and Lycos do have a disclaimer indicating
these are sponsored links - advertisements thrown in your face! Although these links are Big and Bold -their disclaimer
is faint in color.Excite however has them listed as if they were found in their
own database, I didn't try to find a disclaimer.
The point is that ultimately most of the top Search Engines have the same content. Would I invest my money in a Search Engine at this time? I think SPAM mail has a better ROI - but who want's to stoop that low?
Overture.com is behind all this. They have some basic technology to accomplish a 'pay per click' scheme (this is the next article to be published on BuildaCOM.com), we're simply amazed that Yahoo! and the like need to use Overture.com's services instead of creating their own infrastructure. Yahoo! can enter the real estate market but they can't control their own content/advertisments?
Our search engine of choice -
Google
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BuildaCOM Online Inc.