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Internet Advertising/Search Engines/Links

The table below summarizes how visitors came to our site, in an attempt to determine how efficient a search engine (or a link placed on a website), could be in directing visitors to a website.

In our opinion, the number of visitors coming from a search engine, Internet directory or link, should be the parameter used to rank by importance, one of the above mentioned method of promoting your site. Even a better parameter would be the number of customers that actually bought a product or service. However, it is more difficult to be determined, and may require too much intrusion into a customer privacy.

Number of visitors used as a parameter, will combine several aspects such as: how easy (or difficult) is to get listed in a search engine or Internet directory, how big is the database of a particular search engine, how easy is to make a search, the relevance of a search, the popularity of a search engine. These aspects should be left to the search engines and their experts to analyze, and use the results to improve the service they provide.

Some preliminary statements, assumptions, definitions:

• The statistics software is under the service provider control, and SMPS Power Supplies can not modify it. All the data can be accessed online by clicking on the following hyperlink: http://www.powersupplies.net/ur-stat .
• Same statistics software, it is also used by: US Department of Defense, Sun Microsystems, IBM, EarthLink, Honda.
• A "Visitor" is defined (by the software manufacturer), as a series of hits from any particular IP address. If any two hits are separated by 30 minutes or more, two visitors are counted.
• We started our main website: http://www.powersupplies.net in July 1998. Since then our position in various search engines is improving constantly.
• At this time more than 50 websites have a link to our site. Those sites placed a link to us mainly because they consider that our site is a valuable resource, worth visiting. The number does not include numerous search engines and Internet directories.
• We had and have good positions in all major search engines. We submit regularly to search engines all our new or updated pages. We follow all search engines rules and do not use any trick to improve our ratings. We, therefore assume that the above table should be typical for most technical/professional business that have an Internet presence.

Some conclusions:

• More than 40% of the visitors did not use a search engine or a Internet directory. They came to our site because they knew it from previous visits, and wanted to get more information or news. They either typed the URL or used a bookmark from their computer. Also they came to visit our site as a result of an e-mail they received from us telling them about new products, services or news available on our site. (Read our Internet Policy).
• Google has increased its popularity and quality, becoming the most important Internet search engine.
• AltaVista, unfortunately, is loosing continuously from its popularity.
• Yahoo! is at least maintaining, if not increasing its popularity. It is the most important Internet portal.
• A web directory dedicated to a narrow subject could be more important than a major general search engine in attracting visitors. ePanorama could generate more visitors looking for information regarding Electronics, compared with well known search engines, such as Excite, MSN, AOL, Ask Jeeves, MetaCrawler.
• A professional/business website, not intended to provide Internet search or directory function, could also generate more visitors than a well known search engine. As an example, O'Grady Engineering site is directing more visitors interested in switch mode power supply design compared with MSN, Lycos, AOL, Ask Jeeves. See also the number of visitors coming from Trath, SMPS Project and David Cary.

Other conclusions related to the subject:

• Internet directories, such as those maintained by the major search engines, are almost useless for somebody searching the Internet to find information regarding a particular subject. Directories may be useful for researchers attempting to create their own databases regarding a subject. The quality of the results returned when you browse a directory are dubious to say the least. Even more disturbing is when you find out that most of the entries are a result of paying a fee. A website with high quality information may never be included in a major Internet directory, unless is paying a fee.
• More and more "search engines", are becoming a collection of paid commercials, with diminishing value for a those people looking for quality information available on the web.

Our advice for those using search engines, Internet directories and Links to promote their business:

• If you are willing to pay for advertising on the Internet, start with ads on Google, AltaVista and Yahoo! in the first place.
• The second important step would be to place ads on non search engine sites, relevant to your business, well known in market segment your are targeting.
• The third step in importance, would be to place ads on Excite, MSN, Lycos, AOL, Netscape.
• We do not believe, at this time, that placing ads on sites other than the ones mentioned above, is worth the money and effort.
• Do not be impressed by the number of "impressions". Ask the site to give you access to the statistics data. Use as a comparison the "number of visitors". See above what we consider a reasonable definition for the number of visitors. And even better, check your site statistics to see how many visitors are coming from the site with your ad. Look where the visitors are coming from.
• We do not suggest to "buy" leading position on some search engines "search results". What they are doing is plain misleading advertising. Period. We are 100% sure that they will be soon pressures from consumer protection groups to end this practice. Also we see no problem for a judge to label these practices as misleading advertising if a lawsuit will be filed. I am sure that you do not want your customers to "link" you with those unethical practices.
• Find more information in our articles:
  • Search engines ethics
  • Search engines relevance study
  • Our Internet Policy
  • Our Search engines position

SMPS Intellectual Property

This article contains information for which SMPS Power Supplies and its partners may claim Copyright and/or Trademark rights and may be subject of a Patent application. Also SMPS Power Supplies and its partners may claim the status of "First to be published", relative to ideas published in this article. Reasonable parts of this article may be quoted by any third parties, without contacting us, assuming that the source is clearly identified and a link to the full article is included. If you wish to incorporate information from this article within a commercial product, you should contact us for permission.

• First Revision: 17 Jun 2001
• Web first published: 24 Jun 2001
• Last Revision: 8 Aug 2001

Comments and suggestions are welcomed and encouraged!

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