Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Update on search, sponsored search and click fraud

Recent developments around search technology help explain why results continue to diverge:
Recent monetisation efforts, i.e. sponsored search developments, ride the wave of growing online ads markets (US: +26% so far this year). Sponsored search represents a growing slice of this.
  • MSN introduced adCenter out of beta in France and Singapore. Beta launch next month in the US. The product will gradually replace Yahoo! service, so MSN will no longer have to share revenues from sponsored search.
  • Pay-per-call expands the market to small companies without a web site.
  • Google experiments with offline placements. Offline adds obviously do not carry links to web sites, but phone numbers instead: pay-per-call again!
Click fraud is the inevitable side effect of this monetisation effort. But there is some good news:

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