Need Advertiser's INPUT - HELP

[prebot]

Hi Guys,

I just started my own search engine, meta search, searching 8 engines and directories and I'm trying to determine the best pricing structure. What do you think should be the going rate for unlimited impressions, unlimited click-through - strictly pay-for-placement for six keywords or phrases?

I'm considering $1/day for a year but maybe it should be lower. ANY INPUT is greatly appreciated.

http://www.prebot.com

[ihelpyou]

Welcome to the forums prebot! :hi:

Unless you already get about one million visitors a day to your search engine, you should not try to charge for it. No one will pay to get it until you have traffic.

[markymark]

I kinda agree with Doug, though a million visitors a day sounds a little high. I liked the look of your site and the home page loaded fast. However, when I searched all I got was a listing for myfreebies that wasn't relevant and an ad for your own search engine. You need to build up your database before you can even think about charging anything for results.

Also, there are too many general ppc search engines out there already. I think you may need to try a more vertical approach. How about building up a fishing search engine, a wedding supplies search engine and so on as separate domains. You can then approach high traffic sites in these field for co-branded searches while you build up your main index. After all, a search engine that has 20,000 listings covering everything is next to useless, but one that has 3,000 listings all concentrating on fishing or whatever could bring in some income and be useful to surfers.

[Spider Man]

when I searched all I got was a listing for myfreebies that wasn't relevant and an ad for your own search engine

I did better, my site came up 12 times when I searched. Very nice indeed :)

[ihelpyou]

I just took a peak at your engine. VERY nice interface Tom. All you need to do is get more sites into the database and then get more visitors and you will be set. :)

[prebot]

Hi guys,

I think that the server may have been in one of its infrequent hickups when some of you visited.

The search results include all the results from yahoo, dmoz, altavista, hotbot, msn, exite, google and alltheweb.

For example, if you search for "casinos", we try to include all the results from the above engines and directories and combine/remove duplicates from all their page one results.

Thanks for the comments and I welcome any suggestions.

[prebot]

HI,

Just one more note:

This isn't a pay-per-click~ it's a pay-for-placment, a nice affordable alternative for ppc's.

Eventually (Feb/Mar 2002) when we reach 500,000 searches a month, this will be an attractive offer.

[Spider Man]

Still there loads of times. I think you probably need to work on your url comparison code. i.e. the following are all equal but all different according to your results.

www.domain.com
www.domain.com/
www.domain.com/index.html
www.searchengineredirector?junk=sdatrt&url=www.domain.com
www.searchengineredirector?junk=sdatrt&url=www.domain.com/

and the same for

www.domain.com/subdirectory
www.domain.com/subdirectory/
www.domain.com/subdirectory/index.html
www.searchengineredirector?junk=sdatrt&url=www.domain.com/subdirectory
www.searchengineredirector?junk=sdatrt&url=www.domain.com/subdirectory/

etc. Great to see my site in so many times, but with a meta search probably not too good for your users.

[edited to break all those urls]

[prebot]

Can you tell me what you searched for? Perhaps that will help me look at the code and see what I can do.

Thanks. Overall though, if the engines I search allow you a listing for about.html, contact.html, .net, .com. etc... we're going to pick it up too BUT I would like to eventually weed out some without losing performance and download times.