What's hot in Euro Search

Julian Smith | June 09, 2005, 04:41 AM

Last week JupiterEvents hosted their Search Engines Strategies roadshow here in London in the bright and breezy surrounds of the Business Design Centre. I was privileged to play a significant role in the event - moderating a variety of interesting panels over the two days - and I've been meaning to blog about it ever since, but you know how work sometimes gets in the way!!

The event seemed to be a great success, the exhibition hall always looked busy, most of the major European players were on show, and the panel sessions I hosted were all pretty much full. And it wasnot just Brits in the audience - I heard questions from Polish, Croatians, Dutch, Italians, Amercians & Canadians!

As is the objective of these events, I learnt a lot in 2 days about what's hot in the world of SEM. Here are some of my learnings on latest developments in Europe:

Pay-per-call is on it way: eSpotting are planning to offer pay-per-call, as an alternative to pay-per-click, within the next couple of months. And Callgen looked like they were drumming up new business at their stand.

Paid search is going mobile: Overture is working on a number of deals to steal a march on the mobile search market. Not only will it supply paid-for search listings on Yahoo!'s WAP site but is looking to supply listings on the off-portal search engine of a UK mobile operator in the near future.

Google is going CPM: Chatting with the Google UK Maximizer team leader he was telling me that the Site Targeting options that are being developed for AdSense (where advertisers can choose sites within the network on which to place graphical ads and pay for positioning on a CPM basis rather than CPC), will be coming to Europe soon.

Your PR needs to be optimized for search: The search marketing agency SiteLynx was telling me they are developing a new capability to handle "Reputation management" in conjunction with search - what is now termed "SEO PR". Whereby the more keywords and links to your website included in press releases, articles or blogs written about your company will all help build link equity to your site and therefore rise its organic listings prominence.

Click fraud is, inevitably, a growing issue: Not surprisingly as the European marketplace expands it is attracting a growing amount of fraudulent activity - although the search providers are all keen to play this down. I was surprised to hear how much refunding goes on between search engine and advertiser. Whether it comes from affiliates and publishers looking to articifically raise their revenues through contextual programmes, or unscrupulous operators looking to bankrupt their competitors budgets, it is now definitely something that search advertisers should be monitoring and paying close attention to. Jim Banks from Webdiversity and Richard Gregory from Latitude provided a comprehensive overview of how to prevent the fire before it happens or fight the fire if it does.

Despite the issue of clickfraud rearing its ugly head, I got the impression that overall the European search marketing industry is in rude health as it continues to expand and dviersify in different directions. Clients should look out for my annual forecasts for the size and growth of the market over the coming years to be published later in the summer.