January 21, 2005

AOL ramps up efforts in search - with high exposure for PPC listings

AOL are finally showing their hand in search.

They've launched a new search engine based on technology from Google, FAST (for local search), Yellow Pages results and, hidden away in the press release, will start offering pay per call advertising.

More on the local search implications of this here on the local search blog.

For PPC advertisers AOL Search is good news too, with 4 listings appearing in the searches I tried (see digital cameras for an example). These are from Google.

So have AOL made a good move? I think so. They are leveraging the value of the AOL / Time Warner back catalogue of content by adding it into search results (they have editors doing this - it's called "Snapshots"). Something Yahoo! do with their content already of course. Will Yahoo! buy more content sources / strike deals with content sources? I think so, over time.

Hopefully we'll see more than articles etc. in the results; there are magazines, music, videos, films etc in the AOL/TW stable; how long until we see micro-payments for access to articles? For AOL users these could be easily charged via their accounts. (They are doing MP3 and film downloads already of course).

Search results include a "Recommended Sites" link (picked by AOL editors) as well as results from Google, but most importantly, AOL's editors have chosen AOL and 3rd party content to promote at the top of the page - for example the loans guide on a search for loans.

Why is this good? Authority. Consumers want to read guides / reviews / articles about their potential purchases (and their problems) from authorative sources they can trust - who hasn't, after all, read an article they found via a web search and started to realise what inaccurate, out of date rubbish it is? Searchers will reward good, up-to-date content with loyalty to a) where they read it and b) where they found it. Neither are remarkable or new ideas of course.

If AOL can attract enough non-AOL users, and build on their strategy of licensing the best search technology from Google, Vivisimo (results clustering) FAST etc, they could take license share - mainly from the likes of Lycos, Ask Jeeves, Excite and other 2nd tier engines I believe. Getting users to switch from Yahoo! and Google will be harder.

More competition in the market place can only be a good thing.

Hat tip to John Batelle for picking up on the release.

Posted by duncan at 09:45 AM | Comments (0)