Alta Vista partners with Goto

• Nov. 16, 2000

Pasadena (GoTo hq), and Palo Alto (AltaVista hq), California - Nov. 16, 2000

GoTo.com, Inc., the largest Pay-For-Performance search network on the Internet, and AltaVista Company, the current leading search and information marketplace for consumers and businesses, announced today  an 18-month search distribution and advertising referral agreement: GoTo will become the exclusive Pay-For-Performance search provider to AltaVista's millions of users. According to this agreement, AltaVista's search service users will find GoTo premium listings on specified search results pages, beginning in November. 

About 32,000 advertisers currently make up the GoTo Pay-For-Performance customer base.  These customers place bids on key search terms and pay by the click-through according to what position or rank they want to appear at in GoTo's search results, which are currently found across tens of thousands of web sites.  With the addition of AltaVista to it's affiliate partners (also included are America Online, Terra Lycos, Microsoft and Netscape), "...We also believe our advertisers will benefit from the additional quality and volume of the traffic to their Web sites from AltaVista", says Harry Chandler, GoTo's executive Vice President.

Over 50 million search queries are performed daily on AltaVista with other services like RagingSearch, shopping, and vertical search centers offered to users.  They also license their patented technology for site owners. "We believe this relationship brings not only another form of relevant results to our users, but a valuable search offering that represents a meaningful revenue opportunity for AltaVista," said Jeff Housenbold, vice president and general manager, Web & Enterprise Products & Marketing, AltaVista Company.

What could this mean for the average searcher on AV? AltaVista users may perceive the relevancy of their search results could decrease, as the results provided in heavily competitive categories will show primarily the companies with the big budgets to pay for those top listings.  The little mom-and-pop sites with equally relevant content but without the cash flow to pay for premium positions may be overlooked. 

This leads to the question of how search results will be determined on AV; will GoTo listings exclusively be the results provided after a certain competition threshold is reached in any key phrase category?  Or will they only show GoTo Premium Listings as the top 10 or so with LookSmart directory and AltaVista's proprietary indexed listings below?  Will GoTo results appear as an option in how the user wants their results displayed?  It's no doubt that GoTo customers will benefit from this arrangement, it remains to be seen if AltaVista users will.

For more information check out this article.

Petra Leinemann
petra@searchengineposition.com