Inktomi beefs up its OEM search service
Inktomi Corp., one of the pioneers in web search, has gotten out of the site search business and is beefing up its web search functionality. It released Inktomi Web Search 9 this week featuring paid inclusion, the ability to target results geographically, an XML interface and refined context to help make search results more relevant.
While the pay-for-placement search model--in which a marketer pays to have certain keywords land high in search results--has been gaining steam over the last few years, Inktomi says that represents only 30% of the paid search model. Inktomi says it will tap into the remaining 70% through its paid inclusion model, which places sites into the results of relevant searches.
The benefits of the paid inclusion model are that it presents retailers to consumers who search on more specific terms, it includes sites faster in results than if the site relied on the search engine’s web crawler and conversion rates are higher because customers usually are searching on specific terms. Paid inclusion results also allow a retailer to include customized search-results summaries that can be used to make a pitch to a consumer. For instance, rather than simply pick up the first certain number of words in a site, the summary of a search on “Harry Potter” could include such wording as “Buy Harry Potter books at Amazon.com and get free shipping on orders of $25 or more.”
Entry level cost, paid by retailers with 1,000 or fewer URLs, of participating in Inktomi’s paid inclusion service is $39 per URL and $25 for each additional URL per year.
Inktomi, a web search engine since 1996, is the provider of results to such major portals as MSN and AOL and such search destinations as HotBot and LookSmart. It does not offer web search results at its own site.
It sold its site search business earlier this month to Verity Inc. for $25 million.
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