Where did Overture Goto?

• Jan. 23, 2002

A fellow SearchEnginePosition employee noticed earlier today that she could not access Overture in her browser. Although a little interesting, this didn't seem like big news until we did a little research and discovered that the site had been down for a few hours, and Overture listings on partner sites had all disappeared.

We later learned that the reason for the offline status was a problem with Overture's server farm, or a possible DNS error (the site was reachable the entire time through overture.com, as long as the 'www.' was omitted). No big deal normally, these things happen - unless you rely solely on paid listings in Overture for all of your online traffic!

Search engine forums this afternoon were abuzz with folks complaining of lost traffic, the result of placing too much emphasis on one search engine, or one form of search engine marketing. On the other hand, a smaller group of marketers posted to express relief: while they had feared a great loss of traffic due to several hours without Overture, they soon realized that having ample listings in other engines and directories (Google, Looksmart, etc...) helped to soften the blow considerably.

This occurrence is a prime example of a simple fact that we at searchengineposition.com have been preaching from the beginning: 'don't put all of your eggs in one basket'! While no one will dispute that Overture has quite a significant market reach these days, it's still not the be-all, end-all solution to your search engine marketing troubles. Proper optimization and submission of your website is still extremely important in providing your site with a well rounded and reliable stream of internet traffic.

Darren Downey