PDA

View Full Version : Expanded Overture/MSN deal?

Lingerboy
02-09-2003, 16:51/04:51PM
I am seeing lots more Overture listings on MSN today for terms that never showed before. You should recall that MSN only listed "highly relevant" Overture listings in the past. Not anymore. Looks like they are all there.
JuniorHarris
04-09-2003, 08:53/08:53AM
Oh my, good eye!~

That sure is going to push Inktomi listings down even farther...which it looks as if they have changed the order of results!~

They must be working on it today, as I did one query that showed all the Overture results, but then when I ran it again I only got the top 3 [overture] results. I can't get the same results again, but I swear the one with all the overture listings had a different result order...
ihelpyou
04-09-2003, 08:56/08:56AM
It's really hard to figure out MSN right now. Although, I would not put too much stock in MSN keeping overture OR inktomi for too much longer.
dannysullivan
05-09-2003, 08:55/08:55AM
MSN said at the SES conference last month that they were going to start taking all of Overture's listings, rather than just a selected subset. That's probably what you're seeing.

It should get more drastic. They also said that MSN Search UK is carrying Overture stuff both inline and sidebar style. If an inline listing doesn't get enough clicks, it gets demoted to the sidebar while a sidebar ad gets promoted to inline. That's how they are trying to balance relevancy while taking a bigger feed. That style is also planned to migrate to the US.
Bernard
05-09-2003, 10:27/10:27AM
Well, they have got to do something to keep the revenues up if they are planning to drop Looksmart in December!
JuniorHarris
06-09-2003, 08:17/08:17AM
>MSN said at the SES conference last month that they were going to start taking all of Overture's listings...

That is exactly what we saw, albeit only momentarily. It will be interesting to see what type of user impact this will have. Guess we'll find out for sure whether users like PPC links or not! At least MSN users anyways...

Makes one wonder what Looksmart has for plans (if any). If MSN is going to drop them, then they ought to be working on something to replace the lost market share. Not that I really care, but there might be a few investors left who do care.