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Google, Ask Jeeves retain partnership
Ask Jeeves Inc. said it renewed a lucrative contract with soon-to-go-public Internet search giant Google Inc.
"We just realized it was important to grow the marketplace and it was better to grow it together than to grow it apart," said Ask Jeeves CEO Steve Berkowitz.
Emeryville-based Ask Jeeves, a smaller but growing Internet search company that has turned itself around since the dotcom bust, said it expects the new three-year deal to generate $900 million to $1 billion in revenues, most of it going to Ask Jeeves.
Google's pending IPO did not spur the negotiations on Ask Jeeves' end, Berkowitz added. With the original contract up for renewal next year and a clause that would have allowed either side to pull out this year, the two decided to negotiate a new deal, he said.
Pay Per Click Keeps Growing
PPC ads are making companies like Google and Yahoo plenty of money so it only seems natural from a search engine perspective to charge. Google says right in their site “Google does not accept payment for inclusion of sites in our index, nor for improving the rank of sites in our results.” But with the difficult to predict Google updates such as Florida and Austin, there is no certainty sites will remain in the top SERP’s, forcing some site owners into advertising with AdWords.
More and more site owners are being driven to PPC to solidify their traffic. This is not only driving up the cost for popular keywords, but creating a wave of PPC engines as everyone tries to get a piece of the action. PPC is certainly not going anywhere any time soon, right now it is still possible to get high rankings in most of the SE’s, however PPC will one day, quite likely dominate.
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