Ask Jeeves meets PPC

[Sonora]

Not sure if this is common knowledge yet...

Ask Jeeves is launching their own PPC premier listing program in early February - Currently they show "premier listings" from Goverture, but according the a rep from the company, the first listing in that section will now come from their own auction style PPC program.

The details that I have so far don't sound too promising - the program looks like it will involve bidding on your keywords and then holding the position for the quarter. but you can't raise your bid and you have no idea what anyone else is bidding. And, you have no way to control how many clicks you get - so if you get the top spot, you could possibly end up owing much more at the end of the quarter than you planned.

Anyway - just thought you all might be interested. I also have it confirmed that Direct Hit will be phased out. The technology will be incorporated along with Teoma, but the site will go bye bye :hi:

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sonora

[markymark]

Not so interested in the PPC thing - they'll have to modify that in order to get users, but getting rid of Direct Hit is more interesting. I'm intrigued to know where you learnt this. Not that I distrust you, but I like to go to the source whereever possible.

I'm particularly interested in how this all affects ask.co.uk . As many of you know Ask UK is a great source of traffic for UK sites, plus they are running a TV ad campaign that seems to be working well (judging by the increase in visitors to many of my clients and. indeed, my own site). Yet Ask.co.uk doesn't yet use Teoma in its results and they still have results showing from three UK PPC engines. Is this going to change ?

[webgator]

I thought I saw Danny Sullivan mention they were getting rid of DirectHit in the last Search Engine Watch newsletter...I can't seem to find where I saw that, but maybe somebody could confirm.

[litmania.com]

markymark, I met somebody from Ask.co.uk last week. He told me that Ask Jeeves UK is a completely different kettle of fish from their US sister site.

AJ UK is 50% owned by Carlton/Granada and is independent of the US site.

I complained to this gentleman that Ask Jeeves USA was no longer accepting submissions for non-commercial sites, and whether AJ UK intended to become anopther shopping portal as well. He said AJ UK would continue to have listings of non-commercial sites and give them prominent placement if they answered questions asked by surfers.

I'm sure, nevertheless, that they'll incorporate PPC soon. Need to pay for Carlton's fancy offices and employee perks.

[Sonora]

lol - markymark - it's okay if you don't trust me - you barely know me!

I actually heard it straight from Ask Jeeves -- as the guy was pitching me the PPC model, I changed the subject to ask about Direct Hit, and he informed me that it was going bye-bye :hi: .

Here is the article from Search Engine Watch:
http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/02/02-ask.html

There is also a discussion about it on "the other forums." Is it okay to post that here?
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sonora

[ihelpyou]

lol That's just fine.

We announced it here as well in a thread somewhere.

[Sonora]

:D

i wasn't sure...

here it is: http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum2/55.htm