GoTo invades the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser

July 10 2001

Pay-per-click search engine GoTo will deliver search results to the most popular browser in the world.

It seems that significant parts of the search engine industry have lost their ability to innovate. We do indeed understand the need for revenue. You do not earn that much from giving away services for free. Still, why nearly all use the same tactics is beyond us.

We are probably beginning to bore our readers with the exploits of the GoTo pay-per-click search engine. It seems to have taken over all the major search sites, the only exceptions being Google, which has its own pay-per-click ad service, and Excite, which is relaying on FindWhat for paid positioning.

You will find identical "sponsored" or "featured" results (read: GoTo advertising) on AOL, AltaVista, Lycos US, HotBot, Netscape, Go, NBCi and a large number of metasearch engines.

Today GoTo announced a one-year search distribution agreement that will feed GoTo's listings to the users of the Microsoft Internet Explorer search pane (i.e. the search field that appears to left of your browser window if you click on the Explorer "Search" button).

Under the agreement, GoTo's "Premium Listings" will be available to the users of recent versions of Internet Explorer. Premium Listings is the feature of GoTo's keyword search service offered to advertisers that serve the top three pay-per-click search results for a certain keyword phrase or query.

This means that the GoTo results will come in addition to regular MSN results, which are based on data from the LookSmart directory and the Inktomi search engine.

We must admit that we never use such built in browser facilities, as they often deliver poor results compared to the regular search services, Microsoft's own MSN search site included.

Unseasoned searchers are the most likely to use this part of the browser. These are exactly the ones that do not know the difference between paid results and regular search engine listings.

"We are pleased to expand our relationship with GoTo and to add additional options for consumers to help them find the search results they want from the Internet Explorer search pane," says Bill Bliss, general manager of Search and Navigation Services at Microsoft Corp.

"Our decision to offer GoTo's search results to our users was based on the quality of its results and our commitment to provide consumers with relevant and useful data from a variety of sources."

Yeah, right! We guess the main reason was money.

Again, GoTo results are not useless. They are ads, and we all use the Yellow Pages when we are looking for a certain product or service.

What bothers us is that these yellow GoTo listings are presented as regular search engine results. Bliss has the nerve to say that they selected GoTo due to "the quality of its results". This must mean that the company that is able to pay the most for a number 1 position per definition has a "quality result" to a certain query. We don't think so.

The GoTo editorial team does indeed check each and every one of the GoTo listings, but they are looking for relevance, not quality.

The search site companies are slowly undermining the credibility and legitimacy of search engine results. AltaVista has, for instance, decided to present GoTo results as "featured sites", and not "sponsored results", hiding the fact that they are ads.

Web searchers will find out, and when they do, they will probably look for search engines that focus on relevance and quality. Our guess is that this engine will be Google.

Yes, Google does indeed serve pay-per-click results, but these are not camouflaged as search results. They are clearly marked as "sponsored links" and even given a different background colour.This tactic will probably reduce the number of click-throughs somewhat. In the long run, however, it is probably the right way to go.

GoTo Continues to Develop Relationship With Microsoft (Yahoo! Finance)
NBCi serves GoTo results only (Pandia)
FindWhat to deliver paid results to Excite (Pandia)

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