How to Goto the Top of the Search Engines

By Merle
Posted Friday, July 16, 2004

When it comes to pay per click search engines, GoTo.com is the clear leader. Over the years, GoTo has established relationships with many of the top search engines and directories, including Dogpile, Netscape, Hotbot, MSN, Compuserve, NBCI, American Online, Lycos, AltaVista and CNET.

So what does all of this mean to you and how do you use these relationships to your benefit? If you bid on keywords/phrases with GoTo and are listed in one of the top three positions, your site will also show up on the above engines when someone performs a search for one of your keyphrases. For example: Suppose you've snatched up "London vacations" as a keyphrase in one of GoTo's top three positions. If an AltaVista user types the phrase "London vacations" in the search box, the results page will have your site listed at the very top. You'll have similar results at the other search engines that are powered with GoTo listings. A nice way to get a top listing, don't you think?

According to GoTo, the top three bids -- which they call "Premium Listings" --get more than twice the number of searches as a regular listing. Let's take a look at just where your site will appear on the various search engines /directories when you secure a premium listing.

AltaVista: To show up on AltaVista's search results page you need to be in the top six bid positions at GoTo. These bids will appearing as "partner listings" on AltaVista's search results page, with the top three bids showing up at the top of the listings and an additional three appearing at the very bottom of the search results page.

America Online: American Online boasts over 2.3 million members. To show up here you'll need to have one of the top three bid positions at GoTo. The links are labeled as "Sponsored Links" at the top of their results page before other search options are listed.

Lycos: The top three listings from GoTo appear under the heading "Featured Listings," before Lycos' own search results. There is also a link labeled "More Featured Listings" that leads you to a full page of GoTo results in bid order. Two more GoTo listings show up in the first ten results under what Lycos refers to as "Web Sites" section.

Netscape: Owned by America Online, they also display GoTo's listings under what's called "Partner Search Results" but only the top two bid positions are shown.

HotBot: The top three GoTo bids show up on HotBot's search results page under the title "Featured Listings."

MSN: After performing a search on MSN, the results page has a link that says "Get the Top 10 Most Popular Sites for [ the keyphrase you searched]". When you click through, the first three listings you'll see are the top three bids from Goto for that keyword or phrase.

CompuServe: If you're in the top ten at GoTo.com, you'll show up in searches at CompuServe. All of their search results appear to be supplied by GoTo and are labeled as "Premium Web Pages."

CNET: If you perform a search on CNET you'll see GoTo.com's top three listings for that particular word/phrase appearing in the right hand column in a box titled "Goto.com Search Partners."

NBCI: NBCi appears to be pulling the top 15 GoTo search results to be displayed on their results page. By clicking "more results" at the bottom of the page, additional GoTo listings are displayed.

DogPile: The first ten results from GoTo.com are displayed on DogPile's search results page. Below those you'll see LookSmart's results followed by Sprinks listings.

As you can see, positioning yourself in the top three positions with GoTo can get you some major exposure on many of the most popular search engines and directories online today. If you've been hesitant about opening your own GoTo account you may want to reconsider after seeing how widespread their reach is. Remember, with GoTo you're not paying for impressions - only for actual click throughs, and the traffic you'll receive is highly targeted. More bang for your buck, so to speak.

By partnering with GoTo and obtaining a "premium listing," you too can be listed at the top of the search engines and isn't that what everyone wants?

About the Author
Merle is an internet marketer, promotion consultant and ezine publisher. Visit her sites at (http://www.mcpromotions.com/), (http://www.merlesworld.com/) and (http://www.ezineadauction.com/).