Pay-for-performance pays off for FindWhat.com
Click-throughs on paid search results have more than tripled in the past year at FindWhat.com, a pay-for-placement search engine, the company reported today. In the fourth quarter of 2001, consumers clicked through on search results 46.2 million times. In Q4 2000, consumers clicked through 13.2 million times.
FindWhat.com earns revenue every time a customer clicks through on a search result. Retailers or other marketing companies pay FindWhat to have their links listed high in the search results. In Q4 2001, results sponsored paid FindWhat an average of 17 cents per click-through vs. 11 cents a year earlier.
FindWhat’s client base grew 23% to 15,300 in the fourth quarter from 12,400 in the third quarter. A year earlier, FindWhat had 6,800 clients.
FindWhat went live in Q1 2000, when it generated 1.2 million click-throughs at an average of 6 cents each to 1,500 clients.
FindWhat.com also offers the BeFirst.com search engine optimization service, which helps clients improve their position among over 300 third-party search engines. As with the search engine, clients pay only for every click-through.
Revenue for Q4 2001 increased 46% to $7.9 million from $5.4 million in Q3 2001. Revenue was nearly $1 million ahead of projections. In Q4 2000, the company’s revenue was $1.6 million. The company generated over $1 million of net income in a quarter for the first time. For the full year, FindWhat’s revenue reached $20.4 million vs. $2.9 million the year before. It expects this year’s revenue to reach $36 million.
FindWhat.com distributes its listings to third-party search engines and other high-traffic web sites, including CNET`s Search.com, and, through its relationship with InfoSpace, NBCi, MetaCrawler, Dogpile, and Go2Net, along with many others. FindWhat.com shares its revenue from paid click-throughs with these sites.
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