Findology
Open An Account With Findology Findology.com, a division of TrafficAds Media, Inc. has grown enormously through 2005, from under 1 billion searches per month earlier this year to over 2 billion searches per month. Partnered with LookSmart in 2004, Findology’s offerings for PPC ads are fairly standard for the industry. The search engine itself has a clean, Google-type look to it. All listings all sponsored (paid), but Findology’s key advantage is its partnerships with a number of channels typically not yet attached to other search engines, providing advertisers with “the most affordable bid rates at an even higher ROI” because of their reach into traffic other search engines don’t have access to. Five different types of search are available: Web, News, People, Shopping and Research. Using the phrase “computer monitors”, we ran the different search types to see what the results would be. Running the Web search, we received results showing sponsored ads above the organic search results (which had a fair number of duplicate entries for the same web page) and along the right side of the page. The News search brought up a number of recent news items with the words “computer monitors” in them, with some useful links at the top of different categories of news for further search opportunities. The news page appears limited to a single banner ad along the bottom. The People search brings up a different search box for first and last name, age, and state. Results that come up (if any do) are provided via Reunion.com (If you click on a name from the search, you are taken to the Reunion.com website where you must register to access information on those names). No advertising is included for this search tab. The Shopping search comes up with virtually the same results as the Web search, which may be a temporary glitch in the system. I will recheck this feature in the near future to see if there is a difference between the two. The Research search was quite interesting, bringing up a listing of articles concerning the topic, branded as being provided via HighBeam Research. No advertising is found on these search results Depending upon what you are researching, your results can include very recent material or more dated items, reflecting the database from which content is being drawn. Still, this useful search function can provide a lot of good information that could add significantly to the search engine’s popularity. The last tab on the Findology search box is “More”, which takes you to the Findology Portal (which can also be accessed through a link at the top of the page). The portal, still marked as beta, is an impressive array of news (including a fun section on “odd” news), weather, movies, and travel information and search possibilities. There is also an instant messenger package that can be downloaded, together with some mobile phone tunes (that you can listen to in advance via your computer speakers), and a quote of the day. A part of the portal is taken up with a comment box for users to provide feedback to Findology, a welcome addition that makes your opinion easy to give and should provide the company with lots of information. If you are interested in advertising on Findology, it features traffic reporting, keyword statistics, automatic and fixed bidding options, as well as the ability to submit more than one site. To open an account, the minimum deposit is $25 and the minimum bid is 3 cents. User comments are generally as one would expect with smaller search engines – a relatively lower amount of traffic than Google or Yahoo!, but often better ROIs and more conversions. They like the portal and many hope to see Findology grow larger due to some of the high-quality features offered, such as the instant messenger and research capabilities.
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