Search Engines Employ New Tactics to Gain Searchers - What can gimmicks do?
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Yahoo representatives are saying that it is still too early to determine whether they will indeed offer incentives or not; and if they do know, they’re not telling. They also will not comment on which incentives the users polled felt was the best deal or the most popular.
Along with the Search and Win Promotion from MSN, a new user interface was rolled out in February to prepare for the larger numbers of searchers. Many of the feedback comments indicate that the new UI is easy on the eyes and user friendly, however searchers also complain that they are still receiving sub-standard search results. One example cited a search for “bad credit loans” returned search results with the same domain sitting in seven of the ten results displayed.
All the gimmicks in the world are not going to change what ideally people want in a search engine: to find what they are looking for quickly and easily. If a search is done by a user, they want the results that show exactly what they need without having to dig deep and sort through the muck of spam oriented websites.
In a sense, some people even feel that the promotion is a sort of “bait and switch” practice. MSN’s baits the user with the promise of the opportunity to win a fabulous prize, to use their search engine, only then to feel cheated by the returned websites in the search results. Certainly, these folks will definitely not switch their search engine, and if they are using MSN for the prizes only, you can bet that come April 1, 2006, they’ll be back to their original search engine.
So how does Google feel about the promotions that may be threatening the position of the most popular search engine? They’re not talking, but chances are they are simply waiting for the buzz to die down. A strategic move at this point may just be the “watch and see what happens” approach, and then crunch the numbers. At least, that’s what I would do.
For information about Jennifer Sullivan Cassidy's professional search engine optimization services, please visit her site at First Class SEO.
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