SES Day Three: "Meet the Exhibitors"
March 2, 2005. New York, NY. Day Three at the SES conference was a day of networking for Instant Position. Although there were some sessions that I would have liked to attend, it was important to spend some time within the exposition hall to evaluate new exhibitors as well as “old.” The Yahoo! Birthday party had been fun the night before, as well as a smaller party thrown by Avenue A/Razorfish Search.
There were over one hundred exhibitors at SES NYC, 2005, ranging from search engines to non-profit organizations. The “usual suspects” in the search engine marketing industry were all there, augmented by some newer companies that offered some useful tools and the standard mix of SEO/SEM services. A few trends that were evident included the presence of a growing number of web analytics and research companies, as well as companies that provide “local search” products and industry-specific “vertical search” properties. Also popular were “alternate” paid search portals allowing an increasing number of paid search opportunities, as well as a newer pricing model related to cost-per-aquisition.
Companies represented that provide web analytics included: Atlas, Hitwise, HitsLink (by NetApplications), Impaqt, IndexTools, Info Search Media, KeywordMax, Omniture, Quigo Technologies, Referencement.com, Sane Solutions, Urchin, WebSideStory, and WebTrends. Instant Position’s preferred partner for web analytics is Urchin. One big trend that many in attendance were speaking of is the idea of "click fraud.” Many analytics packages now incorporate some method of examining click-through data for accuracy, in an attempt to sift-out potentially automated clicks generated by competitors or hackers. WhosClickingWho.com even advertises that they are a Pay-Per-Click Auditing service. Many web analytics companies and SEM firms are now bidding for the term “click fraud” within paid search listings.
Local Search is a field that has grown in leaps and bounds since the last SES conference we attended, in San Jose last summer. Many people are aware that Yahoo! recently launched its “Yahoo! Local,” and providers such as Yellowpages.com and Verizon SuperPages have been on the forefront of local search since the idea of finding local results for searchers seeking “pizza restaurants” or “day spas” became important. One particularly strong new local search company in attendance was True Local, which provides a link on their web site (www.truelocal.com) in order to submit your website or organization for inclusion within a particular geographic area. One certain benefit of being listed within Yellow Pages, Verizon SuperPages, or True Local is that search engines pick up on these directory listings and provide them in many search results.
Vertical search is becoming important as well. Not only will websites benefit from being listed within search engines that provide industry-specific results, but once again these listings can be picked up by larger crawlers such as Google and MSN and appear within search results for relevant queries. One such example with a booth at the conference was SideStep (www.sidestep.com), which is a vertical search engine specializing in travel. Competitors to SideStep include Kayak.com, Wctravel.com (a division of Travelocity), and www.aardvarktravel.net. Other large industries will be gravitating towards vertical search engines along with the travel and retail industries. Some good examples of vertical search engines for the retail industry include Shopping.com and BizRate.com.
Both of the previous retail search engines offer pay-per-placement opportunities, along with a slew of other engines with paid search products that not as well known and popular as Overture or Google AdWords. Some that were present in NYC included: BlowSearch, Business.com, Findology, FindWhat, Google, Interchange/ePilot, Kanoodle, LookSmart, Overture (changing name to Yahoo! Search Marketing Solutions), Search123/ValueClick, Searchfeed, Snap, and True Local (yes you can pay to have your listings higher up in the local results for your industry). You can see more PPC Search Engines on our site. One of the trends that seems to be gaining momentum within paid search is the cost-per-acquisition or cost-per-call model. This allows advertisers to pay per-contact instead of per-click, and is a desireable option for marketers that have experienced low ROI from “traditional” cost-per-click models.
The exhibition hall was certainly crowded on both days, and it seems as if many of those with booths were generating some good leads or contacts. Acoona sponsored an Aston Martin “Mini” giveaway, but left many people wondering what they did due to a lack of in depth information available at their booth. They provide a new search technology that aims to “get the user more involved in determining his/her search results.” A couple of my favorite booths included the In Touch Media booth, manned by among others Bob Cefail and co-founder Laura Betterly. I also liked the SEO, Inc. booth which took a little heat for using female models to help promote their products. They provide some good SEO analysis tools and we may strike up a partnership with them soon. Last but not least, I volunteered to help out at the SEMPO booth, which was great fun. For more information about SEMPO, click here.
See Day One Recap.
See Day Two Recap.
See Day Four Recap.
