Ask Jeeves Partners

[lou1210]

I may be asking the wrong question, or it might have been asked somewhere else here, but I thought I'd ask.

Are Ask Jeeves and TEOMA still the only two engines that use the ASK database? I thought I read somewhere that they had like 10 other partners that they were supposed to share information with. We submitted to ASK JEEVES using I Need Hits and have been spidered by ASK/TEOMA but haven't seen much in the way of rankings from any of their supposed partners.

Have I been misinformed or has that not happened yet? I guess I'm just trying to get an idea on how this is working since the whole Yahoo thing took place.

Thanks.

[Bernard]

With Site Submit, your content can be found throughout the Teoma search partner network, including sites such as: Ask.com Teoma.com Metacrawler Excite iLor MySearch.com MyWay.com Ixquick Mamma.com Hotbot.com Search123.com

http://ask.ineedhits.com/

[Warren]

With the potential for more partners if (when?) Ask Jeeves expands into the Interactive Holdings traffic sources.

The quoted market share is meant to be around 7% once this distribution comes on line.

[Nabgoz]

Is it really worth bothering with search engines other than Google and Yahoo? Something like 80% or more of search engine traffic comes from Google, and most of the rest from Yahoo. I have two websites that rank in the top 10, ranging from 1 to 7, for relevant search phrases on the Teoma network. Yet over the past 3 months I have had no more than 3 or 4 referrals from Ask Jeeves, and none from any other of Teoma's partner sites. Personally, I save my money and concentrate all my efforts on Google, and to a lesser extent Yahoo.

[lou1210]

Well part of the problem is the site - Looking 4 Limos (http://www.looking4limos.com/) I'm referring to (and asking about the AJ Partners) is having issues getting on Google and Yahoo naturally (I'm working on the optimization now, trying to fix that). So we did pfp on AJ and we're wondering what other partners they have. We also do Google Ad words too.

[Nabgoz]

Your site is actually listed on Google's database. I've just checked. But being listed is one thing, being found on search results is another. I've looked at your back links on Google, and there's only two links listed. You need to have tons of back links from good websites with a related theme to push the site up the search results. In addition to optimizing the site content, of course.

So I would suggest working on getting lots of links. It's a hard slog, very time consuming, but there's no avoiding it, I believe.

[lou1210]

I'm not disagreeing with you in anyway (and not trying to get off topic here :) ) I just don't know who would want to add links to our site since it would be a direct competition to ours. I've emailed our clients that we currently have listed and I'm waiting for a response back from them that they've linked to us.

[Nabgoz]

Many webmasters and website owners link to each other on a "you help me I help you" basis. Reciprocal linking is very common. Of course, direct competitors will not be too keen to link to you, or you to them, but you can seek out website in related industries. One way is to look up the links to limo hire companies and approach websites that have linked to them, asking for reciprocal links. You post a link to them, they post a link to you, and you both gain pagerank.

I can give you details of how to do it if you e-mail me, since there's not enough space on posts here.

[Warren]

Is it really worth bothering with search engines other than Google and Yahoo? Something like 80% or more of search engine traffic comes from Google, and most of the rest from Yahoo.

That comment always amazes me.

At San Jose SES I was working our stand and got the opportunity to speak to many hundreds of people. A common comment was that "why should we care about anything else than Google because it gives me 85% of my traffic".

I would respond with these points
* are you not interested in growing your business 15%?
* What happens if you get dropped from the index for some reason. Where will your business come from then?

So, I always talk about a balanced campaign. One which doesn't only focus on Google (and now Yahoo! Search Technology) but looks at all of the various searches out there. Of course, the amount of effort you put into each one does differ depending on the ROI but does that mean you shoudln't focus on them?

Getting back on topic however, Ask Jeeves provides some great deomgraphics that many people find convert really well. Whilst the overall traffic may be smaller in terms of volume, many of my customers experience a great conversion rate (the best measure in my opinon) from Ask Jeeves. The areas they do well in are products aim at women, because nearly 60% of searchs at Jeeves are women.