Online Information Development and Design
               Buddy, Can You Paradigm?
                   This Space For Rent
___________________________________________

slainson@rmii.com (Suzanne Lainson) seemed to cover the most 
territory in the recent thread about premium positions in search 
engine results pages, so I'll work with her material.

As I understand it, and Roz will correct me if I'm wrong, the most 
recent example of this sort of thing offers bold-faced listings to 
companies that want to pay for special treatment. In this model, a 
company's listing appears only when the search engine finds it, but 
the boldfacing makes the listing stand out on the results page.

Another model, not Roz's, breaks the results display into a header
area and a body area. The search results appear in the body, one
indistinguishable from another. The premium position is the header,
which usually is visibly distinct from the body area. Premium
positions are sold by category. So if a company buys the premium
position in the Computers category, every search that falls within
that category displays a page, the header area of which will display
the company's listing. 

Those are the two most common models for premium positions in 
database products.

Now to the specifics that Suzanne and others raised.

> It occurs to me that paid placements are going to have declining value in
> the future as people and technology become more sophisticated.

Don't see why this would be so. A search hit is a search hit, and 
prominence is prominence.

> For example, is a company going to buy a placement for the word "hotel" so
> that its URL appears whenever "hotel" is typed in, even with modifying
> terms such as California? What if the hotel company doesn't have any hotels
> in Calfiornia?

There are three ways to look at this example.

1. Company pays for boldfaced listing. If it has a hotel in 
California, its listing appears on the results page. Win.

2. Company paid for category header listing. A search for hotel 
displays the company's listing in the header display of the results 
page. Win.

3. Company pays for boldfaced listing and search engine is rigged to 
display low-relevance premium listings. Company's listing is 
displayed at the bottom of the search results in boldface. Win. 
(Company doesn't care if you're looking for _California_ hotels, it's 
enough that you're the kind of person who stays in hotels.)

> Will it appear in searches even if it does not offer the specific product
> that the searcher has requested? If so, that would lead the searcher to
> discount the paid placement and perhaps discount the company and the search
> engine.

Two things. Don't confuse the boldfaced body listing model with the 
category header listing model. The other is that there isn't much 
difference in low-relevance search returns. Nobody dumps on AltaVista 
for providing 18 pages of low-relevance returns.

> If the paid placement is linked to more specific terms so that it only
> appears in searches that specifically describe the products/services it
> offers, then it would have likely turned up on high on the list
> anyway--somewhat negating the value of the paid placement.

Not really, since it would look differently.

> And as search engines incorporate agents which adapt themselves to people's
> thinking patterns, any incongruous placements are only to become more
> evident if they can get past the agent in the first place.

 
> What you come back to is the fact that a company is more likely to reach
> its target audience if it can specifically offer what the consumer wants.
> The more a company can held an search engine work to facilitate a search
> rather than to offer off-topic placements ultimately the better for all.

This is incorrect; it is an assumption similar to the one that a
company only derives benefit when an ad is seen by someone intent on
buying one of the company's products. A company derives benefit when 
an ad is seen by the type of person who would one day buy one of the 
company's products or by a type of person who would become the type 
of person to buy the company's product. 

> Of course there is value in intrusive advertising and a company might be
> able to attract the attention of consumers who are just wanting to browse
> within a certain category. But I'm not sure if search engines are the best
> way to encourage browsing in the first place. If a consumer doesn't really
> know what he or she is looking for and is open to suggestions, I'm not sure
> he or she would go to a search engine for creative ideas.

Seems that's usually the first place people go when they're not sure 
what they're looking for.

> More specific example. Let's say the the official NBA buys a placement.
> Does it buy a placement for "sports," for "basketball," or for "NBA?"  The
> more focused its placement buy, the less it needs to buy it because it will
> show up prominently on the search anyway.

It buys a placement for the engine company's sports package, which
would include all three. It's unlikely that the buy is for anything 
less than fairly broad categories, particularly at the outset.

dw

        Donovan White

        Online Information Development and Design
        dwhite@olinfo.com          (508) 597-5321           
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