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Pay-per-click engines

www.crosslinkz.com

Add (create account) at http://www.crosslinkz.com/se/add.shtml
No Help
No advanced search

Very small pay-for-listing site that seems to contain only paid for listings (unlike goto.com, which is backed up by traditional search results). Listings are added to categories and results show matching categories as well as individual pages. For simple searches the list of categories can be rather large. When I tried this site it wouldn't display in Netscape due to a HTML table coding error.


www.epilot.com [New]

About takes you to the www.eliberation.com site

Open an account at http://epilot.com/backoffice/AdvertiserCenter3/AdvSignup.asp?cn=nm&NewAccount=True

List your site http://epilot.com/Backoffice/AdvertiserCenter3/Storyboard/Storyboard1.asp, but you have to
click "continue" a few times

A pay-for-click site that only shows it's paid-for listings. It's main business seems to be selling results onto affiliate sites. If you set your rate at $0.07 or more per click, then it will "qualify" for listing on a number of partner sites - mostly meta search engines. Whether you actually get listed depends on the rates set by your competition. A minimum charge of $10/month applies if your click-through charges don't reach that much.


www.findwhat.com

Help at http://www.findwhat.com/static/help_search.html
No advanced search
No add URL page, but you can "promote your site" (i.e. buy clicks) by visiting http://www.findwhat.com/static/ab_promote.html

This site follows on from goto.com's example of allowing people to buy their way to the top of the ratings. As such the site offers various promotional and affiliate service links, and even had a lottery graphic on the front page.

Powered by Inktomi.


www.goto.com

No Advanced Help
Help is at http://iwww.goto.com/d/about/
"Promote your site" is at http://iwww.goto.com/d/about/advertisers/ and costs from $25.

One of the first search engine where you can "buy" prominence on the results list, although they do back this with results obtained by spidering the web. (originally using Inktomi)

Some might say that paid listings corrupts the purity of search engines, but as the Internet bubble bursts the harsh reality is that search engines also need money to survive. Debate these days tends to centre on how Goto results are presented at partner sites (e.g. as "sponsored" links, or as "featured" sites).

Through affiliate deals at many of the major portals and search engines, Goto has become increasingly successful, making it important as a service to spend your advertising cents with, although here too they have had to raise prices from their original 1 cent/clickthough, and set a minimum monthly spend.

The success of Goto has inspired a number of similar services, and their affiliate deals means that a number of sites have come into being merely to act as a front end to serving up Goto results.


www.hootingowl.com [New]

No Help (for searching)
Add listing at http://www.hootingowl.com/directory_faq.cfm?u=0000000
About at http://www.hootingowl.com/1how_to_list.cfm?u=0000000

A search engine that lists paid-for results first. The search engine looks like a meta search, but in fact only AltaVista results were listed in the searches I tried.

Accounts start at $100, directory is ODP-based. Account gets one primary keyword, to which you can add 4 more key phrases to direct traffic to one URL (Which seems pretty restrictive to me)

Unlike other engines you're paying for placement, and not per-click. As far as I can tell the placements are permanent.


www.kanoodle.com

No Help
Add listings at https://safe.kanoodle.com/client_services/listings/
About at http://www.kanoodle.com/about/about.html
Sign up at https://safe.kanoodle.com:8443/signup.jhtml

Styling itself as a B2B e-commerce site. You can sign up for as little as $25.


www.rocketlinks.com or www.bay9.com or www.baynine.com

No help.
No advanced search.
List your site at http://www.bay9.com/enter.cgi?link=&clicktrade=
Sign up at http://www.bay9.com/cgi-local/step1.cgi?link=&clicktrade=

A pay-for-clicks search engine that seems to take results from other pay-for-click engines such as goto.com. Some of the "results" are annoyingly generated from the search phrase e.g.

'before you search for "<search phrase>" visit bingo.com'

Which seems to miss the point of searching in the first place. The fisrt of these takes you to their auction site. This site seems to have got the balance seriously wrong between providing search results and adverts.


www.searchcactus.com

Help at http://www.searchcactus.com/tips.asp
Promote your site at http://www.searchcactus.com/advertiser/
FAQ at http://www.searchcactus.com/advertiser/faq.asp

A pay-for-clicks search engine that uses Google to back up its results, and adds in Ask Jeeves sponsored text adverts.


www.searchhound.com

No help.
Submit URL at http://www.searchhound.com/Pages/submit.htm, guidelines are
at http://www.searchhound.com/cgi-bin/sh_acc_pages.cgi?../Pages/guidelines.htm Make bids at https://www.searchhound.com/Pages/bids.htm

A pay-for-clicks search engine that only shows 5 results per page, and displays the requested page in a frame with their banner at the top. Seems to rank bidded terms first, followed by some form of results from Yahoo. Results are "Ranked by Neural Network Intelligence", so maybe they improve over time :-)

OTOH, the submission guidelines clearly state that the ranking is random unless you place a bid.


www.sprinks.com

No help.
No advanced search.
Promote your site at http://sprinks.about.com/

Shows 20 results per page. Powered by Inktomi. Quite a nice, fast site that shows related search terms in the lefthand margin, and usefully adds it's search box to each of its pages.



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