Ask Jeeves results

[Stephanie]

I gather, from a couple other threads, that the first results AskJeeves will display (sponsored listings) are from Overture.

If I haven't given Jeeves or Teoma any money, how do they populate the rest of the rankings? I'm showing up but I want to know how to rank higher.

Any insight would help me see through the mud.

Thanks,
Stephanie :hi:

[ihelpyou]

You probably were spidered by teoma and added before they started charging. A good thing. :) I don't have enough info on Teoma yet to know how to rank highly. Seems to be similar to Fast but just don't know yet.

Not enough traffic from ask as of yet to be really concerned right now though.

[Stephanie]

Just a little FYI regarding some stats out of the New York Times:

Top Search parties:

Google (29 mil visitors, avg of 24.1 minutes a month)
Ask Jeeves (17.7 mil visitors, avg of 16.2 minutes a month)
Yahoo Search (36.2 mil visitors, avg 10.7 minutes a month)
Aol.com Search (25.2 & 6.9 respectivly)
MSN Search (40.5 & 6 respectivly)
Alta Vista (6.4 & 18 respectivly)

I only mention this because the owner of my company wants me to concentrate on these (mainly the top three) in regards to most time spent and number of visitors. Personally I think someone would spend 16.2 minutes at AskJeeves to simply ask some stupid questions, like why is tweety bird yellow?, not do a legitimate search for a company. Try telling that to the man who signs your paycheck. :hi:

Do you know of another source of info regarding Jeeves? I do want another paycheck or two! ;)

Stephanie

[Matt B]

Do you want the contact info for AskJeeves/Teoma? I've got a number and email for one of the product managers. He was pretty helpful with my questions.

I am not sure about posting contact info, so email if you want it.

[nitewing2]

I've never paid for inclusion in any search engine but after searching Teoma on the keyword astrology I found I was number 7 and then another search put me at 8, then at 7, etc...out of a field of thousands!

:p

That smily is me, being happy!

Ann/nitewing2

[Advisor]

Ranking well in Teoma is similar to ranking well in Google or FAST. Great keyword rich content, same in Title, and good links pointing to you.

Jill

[Farhan]

Teoma heavily emphasizes on Link Popularity but not in the same fashion like Google. Google accounts links from any site that links to you, regardless of the site's subject. However, Teoma forms communities of sites of the same industry. When a site of that industry gets links from its industry sites, it appears to rank high at Teoma.

[Stephanie]

Thank you to everyone who has given their time to answer my question(s).

:cheers:

I'm trying to learn as much as I can but I'm finding that I don't have the time to really concentrate on this, without hurting my other projects. What I would really like to do is hire an expert (there is so many of you out there) to handle the ins and outs of our sites.

I think that the owner would listen to someone else telling him to add key words on our sites, better than he is listening to me. The catch is to cost justify the oursourcing. Does anyone have some selling points that would convince a company to invest in their services?

You can e-mail me personally at interpak@mindspring.com if you don't want your "secrets" or ideas revealed in a forum. Right now I'm looking for ideas on convincing our owner that this is the way to go. I hate the idea of saying "I just don't have the time or experience to handle this". It goes against the grain.

Thanks in advance for any input.

Regards,
Stephanie:)

[Advisor]

Stephanie,

SEO is not hard; but there is quite a learning curve. What I tell potential clients is that sure, they could easily do it themselves if they have more time than money. The time factor comes into play because you'd be basically learning everything from scratch. Although it's easy, there is a steep learning curve. However, you have other things to do with your time that will be much more cost effective for your company.

So yeah, you could learn it, implement it, see if it worked, fix it some more, see if it worked, fix it some more, see if it worked, etc., while meanwhile whatever other work you were supposed to be doing would get pushed aside.

Or, you could hire someone who already knows exactly what to do the first time around. They work with you and you all get it done quickly and efficiently. Yeah, it costs some money, but then it's done, and done right the first time around. Then all you have to do is sit back and watch the traffic and sales pour in! :)

Would you do your own plumbing? Your own electrical wiring? Your own brain surgery? (hehehe...okay, it's not brain surgery, but you get the point!)

Hope this helps!

Jill

[Matt B]

I feel your pain, Stephanie.

I used to work at an ad agency that handled about 10 very large websites. They didn't see any value to search engine marketing or optimization, even after I showed them the numbers. They just didn't think it was worth the effort, in other words, they wouldn't make enough money doing what was right for the clients. I found out later that they didn't even submit the client's sites to Yahoo! in order to "save" $300 per.

Needless to say, I'm not there anymore and very happy at my new gig.

[Stephanie]

You can almost smell the love in the air.... no wait, it's the LookSmart e-mail I just got... <sniff> <whew> :D

Once I work up the courage (and enough techie brownie points) I'll have a conversation with the owner. He's open minded, most of the time, and I should be able to convince him to outsource this if he wants it "done right the first time". I'll bombard him with some of the "changes" that have taken place in the last 6 months. This should give him a nice glazed expresion and leave him suseptible to any demands... uh I mean suggestions. ;)

Thanks Doug, Jill and SEO Guy (Matt?) for your help and comments. <sniff> love ya man

Stephanie

[Matt B]

Yeah - Baffle them with BullS***. That's a great way to convince somebody.
Just try to fill him in on the major SE changes in the past month, and the implications, and see how long it takes him to get confused!

[Blue]

Um.......just wear the same outfit that your avatar is wearing and your boss will just say yes without even listening! :cool:

[Stephanie]

That won't work. I make him blush too easily as it is :o:

I'd hate to see his reaction to my belly ring! ;)

Stephanie

[Matt B]

:eek: