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Posted By:
andymurd
155 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.cabel.name)
Category: Searching
Maybe written Japanese makes it harder to find snappy, memorable domain names. Anyone with Japanese skills care to comment?
Hopefully, it will flop (like AOL's keywords) instead of making large corporations reach for the lawyers to get themselves to the top of Google.
3 Comments
Comments
Very interesting isssue, demonstrated with authority (the author provides screenshots from Japan).
The big issue is whether AOL Keywords is a viable strategy for commercial SEM. It's easy, generates clear accountable revenues, and enables everyone to play by paying (which leads to a market that can be optimized for efficiency etc).
The big question is, is it sustainable?
The comments of the post are also very interesting (they give several explanations for why this is happening in Japan).
The idea itself is frighteningly stupid.
It caters to average users, sure. But the price you pay is that you forgo your brand name(s) for search terms you do not own. You place yourself at the whim of another company (the search engine).
You also expose users to another 4-9 competitors when they search that query.
Good points, John & sza - I especially liked 'The idea itself is frighteningly stupid' :-)
I may be wrong, but the adverts looked like they were each targetting different engines. If that's the case, they are asking that readers remember the search term AND the search engine. That was one of the biggest factors in the failure of AOL search terms (in the UK at least, where AOL was not a big ISP at the time).