WEB SITE VISIBILITY ON SEARCH ENGINES The enclosed document is a report by 30K Media, an American company providing "Advanced search engine positioning service". The report presents an analysis on the boating industry presenting the best positioned web sites in the top (American) search engines. The fact that our company's Web site is positioned in No. 3 against large American corporations that are investing millions of dollars in their Web site presence, talk about the quality of the work that we develop in On-line marketing. We are also the only non US web site in the top 30 on the list. This report will undoubtedly mark our company as a leader among the boating sites.

Search Engine traffic measurement and optimization
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Initiating Search Engine traffic generation coverage:
Boat Sales Web Sites - October 2000

Search Engine Visibility

Search engine traffic generation as a percent of level generated by a #1 position on most commonly entered search terms.
Notes: Results for www.yachtworld.com include www.boatingyellowpages.com and www.boats.com
Results for www.boattraderonline.com include www.allaboutboats.com

Don't search engines deliver a level playing field on which everybody gets a reasonably equal share of the traffic?

Not at all, as the chart on the top of this page of this report shows. The dominance of just a few brands seen there reflects a pattern which is normal rather than uncommon.

Don't the search engines do their own thing and produce a pattern of results which a marketer can do nothing about? No. Search engine rankings are produced by rules which, while complex and sometimes rapidly changing, can be addressed to improve your site's visibility.

Key Search Engine Facts For Internet Marketers 42% of those who buy from online retail sites arrive via search engines. - NFO, "Online Retail Monitor," (October 99) Over 500 million searches are performed on search engines every day. - Search Engine Watch (July 00) 84.8% of Internet users use search engines to find new web sites. - GVU (January 99) 20% of all search queries conducted on AltaVista are product-related. - Alta Vista (October 99) 57% of Internet users search the web each day, making search the second most popular Internet activity (email is the most popular activity, with 81% checking each day). 46% say they look for product information, making this the third most popular activity. - SRI, "How People Use the Internet" (February 00) Internet users rank search as their most important activity, awarding it a 9.1 on a 10-point scale. The next most important activity ranked only 6.3. - Jupiter Research (November 99) Search engines are the leading way users in the United Kingdom locate web sites. 81% said search engines helped them find sites. Following links was the next most popular method (59%). - Forrester Research (May 00)

Is your brand acquiring its fair share of these dramatically low-cost visitors? If not then you are conceding a dramatically lower average customer acquisition cost to your competitors.

What drives search engine visibility?
Certainly not the size of advertising budgets.

What matters most is web site design, specifically:

• Whether the design has been driven by an understanding of consumers' behaviour when searching on the web.
• The extent to which your site has been configured to be search-engine friendly.

  ...even the best-positioned sites show a huge variability in their effectiveness across different search engines.

  Understanding consumer behaviour
  The critical factor here is the effectiveness with which specific phrases typed into search engines by consumers have been identified and targeted. Several leading air travel-related sites, for example, target the search term "consolidators". That word specifies accurately what they do, in language their owners hear every day. The fact is however that virtually no consumers ever use that term to look for sources of air tickets on the web.

  Search engine friendly design
  Getting this right requires an understanding of the practices of the various search engines, which is complex because they rapidly implement constantly changing approaches.
  This will very rarely however require a site 'rebuild'. A few well chosen 'tweaks' to your code, unseen by your users, are usually enough to reposition your site.
  The chart below shows how even the best-positioned site shows a huge variability in its effectiveness across different search engines and search terms, with corresponding room for improvement:

Position report for www.yachtworld.com

September 2000

Most frequently entered search terms, major search engines, top 100 rankings

Position report for www.aboard.co.uk

September 2000

Most frequently entered search terms, major search engines, top 100 rankings

Search terms		boats	used boats	boats for sale	sailing	boat sales	boat trader
Alta Vista		3	Not in first 100	Not in first 100	55	Not in first 100	1
AOL Search		Not in first 100	Not in first 100	Not in first 100	Not in first 100	Not in first 100	Not in first 100
Excite		10	37	Not in first 100	Not in first 100	Not in first 100	Not in first 100
Google		5	Not in first 100	Not in first 100	Not in first 100	Not in first 100	62
GoTo.com		84	22	23	Not in first 100	12	7
Lycos		7	Not in first 100	Not in first 100	Not in first 100	Not in first 100	Not in first 100
MSN		12	77	3	Not in first 100	3	9
Netscape Netcenter		56	Not in first 100	28	Not in first 100	Not in first 100	Not in first 100
Yahoo		3	Not in first 100	37	Not in first 100	Not in first 100	Not in first 100
Yahoo Google		5	Not in first 100	Not in first 100	Not in first 100	Not in first 100	33
Weighted average position for this URL across 16 major search phrases: 30
Achieving positions for this URL as strong as the leader m your industry would generate 1.2 times the current search engine traffic
Achieving #1 positions across the 16 major search terms would generate 17 times the current search engine traffic

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