A Dissertation Report on

E-MARKETING AND CUSTOMER LOYALTY

With special reference to Search Engine Marketing (Google) Submitted By:
ACCURATE INSTITUDE OF MANAGEMENT AND TECHNOLOGY

TABLE OF CONTENTS
TOPIC PAGE NO. Page 5 No. 6 7 8

Authorization Certificate Acknowledgement Executive Summary List of Illustrations Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Internet 1.2 Internet marketing trends Chapter 2 E-marketing 2.1 Products of e-marketing 2.2 Tools and Techniques of e-marketing 2.3 Benefits of e-marketing 2.4 E-marketing plan and business model 2.5 Top ten strategic issues of e-marketing LOreal.. Lakm...... 2.6 Dos and donts of e-marketing Revlon. ... 2.7 E-marketing and customer loyalty . 2.8 E-marketing in India Maybelline....... 18.. Chapter 3 Search Engine Marketing 3.1 Early search engines 3.2 Types of search engines 3.3 how do search engines work 3.4 Methods of search engine marketing 3.5 Understanding search engines 3.6 Revenue model of search engines Methodology... . 2

9 10 12 13 15 18 20 23 28 29 32 35 36 38 42 44 50 53

3.7 Branding strategy of search engines 3.8 Advantages of search engine marketing Analysis... Studied.. 3.9 Search engine scenario of India . 3.10 Search engine marketing and customer loyalty loayltyAnalysis..

55 56 57 62

Chapter 4 Google 4.1 Introduction to Google 4.2 Life of Google query 4.3 Google web search features 4.4 Branding strategy 4.5 What made Google better? 4.6 Google business model and Revenue model 4.7 Google building customer loyalty 4.8 Google in India Chapter 5 Research and Analysis 5.1 Objective of study 5.2 Research methodology 5.3 Variables used 5.4 Sampling procedure 5.5 Method of Analysis Chapter 6 Limitations & Conclusion 6.1 Conclusion 6.2 Limitations 6.3 Suggestions Annexure Questionnaire Bibliography

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86 87 89 92 93

111 112 114 115 115 118

AUTHORIZATION CERTIFICATE
To MUKESH SEHRAWAT Faculty ACCURATE INSTITUDE OF MANAGEMENT AND TECHNOLOGY Greater Noida Respected SIR, Subject: Desertation report on E-marketing and Customer Loyalty I student of PGDM, AIMTDM1113150, presents to you dissertation report on Emarketing and customer loyalty I have made a in-depth study on e-marketing encapsulated view of 125 customers in cities across India and have conducted a research in order to know Importance of search engines in e-marketing and do they generate customer loyalty and how. This study is a unique effort and has never been submitted to any institution. Submitted By:by :-SUMIT GERA SEHRAWAT (2011-13) Authorized MUKESH PGDM

ACCURATE INSTITUDE OF MANAGEMENT AND TECHNOLOGY

Greater Noida

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
For this project I am grateful to MUKESH SEHRAWAT, Faculty of ACCURATE INSTITUDE OF MANAGEMENT AND TECHNOLOGY, for being my Desertation Guide and giving me her valuable time and cooperation as and when required. I would also like to thank all the respondents who took time out of their busy schedules to give interviews and fill questionnaires. It would have been an impossible task to complete without their esteemed help. It was indeed a great experience carrying out the research. It provided me with a lot of learning related to the E-marketing with special reference to search engine marketing and how it leads to building customer loyalty. Thank you SUMIT GERA

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The dissertation report aims to study the current E-marketing trends and how do they generate customer loyalty. This project studies the nature of E-marketing and search engine marketing in detail which has become the most prevalent tool of E-marketing. A survey was also conducted to know the attitude of internet users towards the search engine marketing and is it successful in generating customer loyalty. The remarkable growth and impact of the Internet and World Wide Web have spurred almost every business to explore E-marketing strategies to enrich relationships with customers, employees, and suppliers. Internet marketing to simply equate to Search Engine Marketing, but while this is important this scope is too narrow to take full advantage of digital media. These techniques are used to support objectives of acquiring new customers and providing services to existing customers that help develop the customer relationship. E-Marketing is the process of marketing a brand using the Internet. It includes both direct response marketing and indirect marketing elements and uses a range of technologies to help connect businesses to their customers. E-Marketing encompasses all the activities a business conducts via the worldwide web with the aim of attracting new business, retaining current business and developing its brand identity.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIGURE 01: CUSTOMERS AGE GROUP FIGURE 02: CUSTOMERS GENDER FIGURE 03: CUSTOMERS CITY FIGURE 04: CUSTOMERS EDUCATION FIGURE 05: CUSTOMERS OCCUPATION FIGURE 06: E-MARKETING TOOLS FIGURE 07: USE OF SEARCH ENGINE FIGURE 08: HOW YOU USE SEARCH ENGINE FIGURE 09: VISIT SEARCH ENGINE FIGURE 10: ENTRY REVIEW FIGURE 11: OFTEN VISIT FIGURE 12: CLICK PROMPT FIGURE 13: LIST SEARCH ENGINE

FIGURE 14: LIKELY TO DO FIGURE 15: MOVE TO ANOTHER SEARCH ENGINE FIGURE 16: SPONSORED LINK FIGURE 17: COMPANY

INTRODUCTION INTERNET
Indias online population currently stands at 25 million and is predicted to grow four fold to a 100 million by 2013. An email address and a website has become a necessity and not a mere accessory or a luxury, it is a given that any self respecting business or enterprise will have a website. The opportunities of the medium to business include advertising space to strengthen brand equity coupled with lower infrastructure costs, unlimited shelf space, a global audience that can be catered to without the restrictions of time zones and working hours. The Internet offers an audience that will grow to a 100 million users by 2012-013, unlimited shelf space and isn't bound by operational timings and geographical boundaries; with an opportunity to cater to country wide city markets (for consumers and suppliers alike) at a comparative miniscule cost. Indias online population currently stands at 25 million and is predicted to grow four fold to a 100 million by 2013. The Internet user represents every facet of society and transcends any bias. Business and Enterprise have been equally keen on embracing this medium. The Internet coupled with media consumption bridges the convergence of aspirations divide between country cousins and urban brats. Changing lifestyles and shopping habits coupled with superior options and selections make this interactive medium most attractive to this e-generation. The opportunities of the medium to business include advertising space to strengthen brand equity coupled with lower infrastructure costs, unlimited shelf space, a global audience that can be catered to without the restrictions of time zones and working hours. 8

Users between the ages of 18-35 are the biggest segment in India accounting for 50% of all users on the Internet.

Some interesting facts:

44% of Internet users believe that a film's online participation influences their judgment in watching a movie reinforcing the need for movie houses to be present online. 73% of Internet users spend less than Rs 500 on a visit to the cinema indicating an affluent demographic. The 18-35 age groups are the biggest spenders.

33% of Internet users have a penchant to buy movie merchandise online & this frequency is likely to grow as we are reaching to households owning DVD Players & Recorders (35%), VCD Players (56%)

94% of users are susceptible to mobile marketing. Moreover, there is high propensity to talk, share amongst friends.

47% of Internet users would pay for mobile content like alerts, ringtones, wallpaper etc.

INTERNET MARKETING TRENDS

The results of a survey of global chief executive officers portend significant Internet growth and business usage over the next five years, with 92 percent of executives projecting revenues derived from E-commerce. Although the information technology that supports electronic marketing currently accounts for just 8 percent of the United States total economic output, over the last five years it has fueled more than one-third of economic growth in the United States. The remarkable growth and impact of the Internet and World Wide Web have spurred almost every business to explore E-marketing strategies to enrich relationships with customers, employees, and suppliers. In fact, the characteristics and availability of the E-commerce infrastructure are driving strategic planning. Internet marketing to simply equate to Search Engine Marketing, but while this is important this scope is too narrow to take full advantage of digital media. These techniques are used to support objectives of acquiring new customers and providing services to existing customers that help develop the customer relationship. However, for Internet marketing to be successful there is still a necessity for integration of these techniques with traditional media such as print, TV and direct mail. This is multichannel E-marketing.

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LITERATURE REVIEW E-MARKETING

E-marketing can be considered to be equivalent to Internet marketing. Most in the industry would look at it this way. However, E-marketing is sometimes considered to have a broader scope since it refers to digital media such as web, e-mail and wireless media, but also includes management of digital customer data and electronic customer relationship management systems (E-CRM systems). E-Marketing is the process of marketing a brand using the Internet. It includes both direct response marketing and indirect marketing elements and uses a range of technologies to help connect businesses to their customers. eMarketing encompasses all the activities a business conducts via the worldwide web with the aim of attracting new business, retaining current business and developing its brand identity. Dave Chaffey, working from a relationship marketing perspective, has defined e-marketing as: Applying Digital technologies which form online channels (Web, e-mail, databases, plus mobile/wireless & digital TV) to contribute to marketing activities aimed at achieving profitable acquisition and retention of customers (within a multi-channel buying process and customer lifecycle) through improving our customer knowledge (of their profiles,

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behaviour, value and loyalty drivers), then delivering integrated targeted communications and online services that match their individual needs. Chaffey's definition emphasises that: It should not be the technology that drives e-marketing, but the business returns from gaining new customers and maintaining relationships with existing customers. It also emphasises how e-marketing does not occur in isolation, but is most effective when it is integrated with other communications channels such as telemarketing, direct-mail, personal selling, advertising, publicity, sales promotion, and other promotional techniques. Online channels should also be used to support the whole buying process from pre-sale to sale to post-sale and further development of customer relationships where this is appropriate. It should be based on knowledge of customer needs developed by researching their characteristics, behaviour, what they value, and what keeps them loyal. The web and e-mail communications should be personally tailored to individual buyers based on the information obtained in the research.

Products of E-Marketing
E-ticketing 39% have bought Railway Tickets online & 48% are likely to buy them in the near future. 47% of Railway ticket purchasers are in the 26-35 age groups 29% have bought Airline Tickets online & 46% are likely to buy them in the near future. 20% have booked Hotel Rooms

Online books-41% has bought Books online & 44% are likely to buy them in the
near future. The 26-35 years (45%) age group represents the highest penchant for shopping for Books online and 85% are Male.

Music online- 24% have bought Music online & 33% are likely to buy them in
the near future. The 18-35 age groups are the highest purchasers of Music online accounting for 74% of purchases & 39% of buyers of Music online are Unmarried

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and 42% are Married with kids. Mumbai and Delhi account for 52% of purchases of Music online. Cities like Lucknow (2%) and Jaipur feature in the Top 8

Electrical goods-40% has bought Electronic Gadgets online & 53% are likely to
buy them in the near future. 74% of Electronic Gadgets are being bought by 18-35 year age group, predominantly male driven (91%), 45% of shoppers are Married with kids & 37% are Unmarried .

Job search - On an average Indians hold an estimated of 5 jobs in their lifetime as

compared to the western norm of 11.since 2004-05 the number of internet users seeking jobs online has increased by 71% from 3.8 million in 2004-05 to 6.5 million in 2005-06 .

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Tools and techniques of E-Marketing

Search engine marketing Email marketing Banner ads Extranets Metrics and analysis Event registration Asset sharing Bulletin board

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Online survey Webinars Live chats

Search Engine Marketing (SEM): Search engine marketing has of late become
one of the principle tools in the armory of the Sauv internet marketer. This prominence of SEM is owing to the fact that the search engines like Google, Yahoo etc. are being used by more and more people as their principle method of searching for relevant information. And, you can hope to sell through them if your website is visible on these search engines. The principle techniques employed in SEM are: o Search Engine Optimization (SEO): A set of practices employed to get ranking for WebPages on relevant keywords (search queries). SEO does this by improving a websites structure and content. o Pay per Click (PPC): PPC takes the sponsored route to drive relevant traffic to a website. The positioning of Ads is determined by a competitive bidding structure. o Paid Inclusion: In paid inclusions, you can pay your way up on to the natural listings of search engines. As of now, Google has stopped its paid inclusion program. E-Mail Marketing: As the name suggests, e-mail marketing is promotion through emails. If used effectively it can assure you maximum returns on each penny you spend. It can be used for acquiring new customers, enhance the relationship you have with your existing clientele. o Advantages: Cheap, instant, easily traceable and if used properly the return on investment can be astounding. o Disadvantages: Due to the overdoing of the e-mail campaigns by online companies, they are now being categorized as Spam mail. Thereby reducing the chances of it actually reaching the intended person.

Banner Advertising: Banner marketing involves placing your advertisement on any third party website. This Ad will link to your website, this way if the potential customer clicks on your banner, he will be directed to your website. It can be a good way of attracting relevant traffic to your website. Interactive Advertising: It involves the use of interactive media applications to promote products online. It in fact involves the right use of text, images, Flash animations,

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AV clips etc. The interactive advertising platform in a way intends to send across a personalized message by giving the readers/ viewers a visual treat.

Blog/ Article marketing: Articles and blogs can be used effectively to propagate a
marketing campaign. By submitting in various directories like Ezine and Go articles, you can hope to generate traffic through the link you have placed on the article directing towards your website. Websites which will do business in Hindi and other local language would do well. Its simply because contrary to the claims, for a major chunk of Indians English is still an alien language. Thats why the scope of internet marketing in India lies in localization of websites. Talking to people in their own language does have its positive attributes. The indigenization of the web for the real Indians and the correct application of the mentioned internet marketing techniques is truly the way forward. Methods of e-marketing are evolving as rapidly as new technologies are developed, but many firms are still struggling with the basics of even getting started. An effective emarketing program should consist of, at a minimum: Company website Email application capable of maintaining lists and groups Email application capable of sending and receiving HTML-formatted messages Shared company project, personnel and contact database Adobe Acrobat software for producing universal-format electronic documents (PDF

What types of eMarketing tools are agencies using today?

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Figure 1

Benefits of E-Marketing

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E-marketing, which includes internet research, having a business website, selling on-line and using email and mobile technologies, is a cost effective way of selling internationally to one or more customers, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks of the year. On-line trading is convenient, quick and cost effective. It provides customers with more variety as they can compare prices and quickly find detailed information on products and the vendor with no pressure from sales staff. Free workshops cover key areas such as how to get the best from a website, starting to address web marketing, using broadband, increasing business by selling on-line and many other topics which will help you to e-market your business. Wider customer base can also benefit from valuable information from you - providing it helps them to do their jobs. TAX BREAKS. When you operate a home based business you can write off the costs for: The area in your home you use for business Office supplies (including your computer) Related tools (hosting fees, journals, magazines, cable TV), Job expenses Travel expenses Meals and entertainment Advertising Your phone Legal and professional services Training LOW STARTUP COSTS. Most businesses cost AT LEAST $5,000 to get started. LOW OPERATING COSTS. HIGH PROFIT MARGIN. Since your costs are low you keep more of the money you make from sales. If you sell a product delivered online (like e-books) you don't have to pay for shipping either. MARKET FOR LITTLE OR NO MONEY. YOU DON'T NEED YOUR OWN PRODUCT. There are a ton of folks with great products you can sell through affiliate programs. TIME FREEDOM. You build your business as fast or slow as you like.

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JOB SECURITY ON AUTOPILOT. OPEN 24 HOURS IN EVERY COUNTRY. CHEAP AND FREE RESOURCES REACH: eMarketing opens up new avenues for smaller businesses, on a much smaller budget, to access potential consumers from all over the world. SCOPE: Internet marketing allows the marketer to reach consumers in a wide range of ways and enables them to offer a wide range of products and services. INTERACTIVITY IMMEDIACY: Internet marketing is able to, in ways never before imagined, provide an immediate impact. DEMOGRAPHICS AND TARGETING: Generally speaking, the demographics of the Internet are a marketer's dream. Internet users, considered as a group, have greater buying power and could perhaps be considered as a population group skewed towards the middle-classes. ADAPTIVITY AND CLOSED LOOP MARKETING : By continuously tracking the response and effectiveness of a campaign, the marketer can be far more dynamic in adapting to consumers' wants and needs. With eMarketing, responses can be analysed in real-time and campaigns can be tweaked continuously Minimal advertising spend wasted on less than effective campaigns. Creates new opportunities to seize strategic competitive advantages. The combination of all these factors results in an improved ROI and ultimately, more customers, happier customers and an improved bottom line.

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E-Marketing plan and E-business Model

The e-marketing plan defines your business model, builds commitment from all people who will be involved in its implementation, and establishes performance criteria and benchmarks for success. The e-marketing plan gives you a road map or a blue print to e-business success. The prerequisite to writing a good e-marketing plan is a complete understanding of your ebusiness model.

What is your e-business model?

A business model describes your architecture for product, service, and information delivery and a description of sources of revenues .A business model identifies the value chain elements of the business such as inbound logistics, operations, outbound logistics, marketing, service; and support activities. At a minimum, your business model will influence the way you forecast sales and predict emarketing expenses. However, beyond basic sales forecasting and budgeting, there are aspects of your e-marketing plan that address the specific way you will do business, generate revenue, and consume resources. Your e-marketing plan should discuss how you will use information technologies to manage the marketing mix (product, price, place, and promotion), how you plan to optimize your content, and how you will allocate resources to attract new customers, create loyalty with existing ones, and create revenue streams.

Merchant Model
The Merchant model is web marketing of wholesalers or retailers of goods and services. The goods and services might be unique to the web or an extension of a traditional brick and mortar store front. This model includes catalogers who have decided to complement their catalog operation with a web site or have decided to migrate completely to an online model. Benefits of this model include increased demand for goods and services via an entry into the global market, potential lower costs of promotion and sales, 24/7 ordering and customer service, and one-to-one custom marketing.

Auction Model

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The auction model web implementation of bidding mechanisms through multimedia presentation of goods and services. Revenue streams are derived from licensing of the auction technology platform, transaction fees, and advertising.

Manufacturer Model
The manufacturer model uses the web to compress the distribution channel so that rather than use intermediaries to get your products and services to market, you go direct to the customer via the web.

Advertising Model
Like a traditional broadcaster or news media business models, the web advertising model provides content and services (i.e., email, chat, forums, auctions, etc) supported by banner ads and other forms of online advertising (perhaps email newsletter ads). Some advertising models are called portals (like AOL, Yahoo, and AltaVista) while others are called Free Models; like Blue Mountain Arts where giveaways help create high volume.

Infomediary Model
This is a web model whereby the infomediary collects data from users and sells the information to other businesses. Traffic is driven to the infomediarys site by free offers

Subscription Model
In a subscription model, users pay for access to the site and the high value content that they view.

Virtual Communities Model

The virtual communities model facilitates the online interaction of a community of users. The model makes it easy for the community members to add their own content to the online community web site.

When developing Internet Marketing Campaign, consider the following:

Target Audience - Know your audience. Find out everything you can about them, from what they like to how much they make per year. The more information you have on your target, the better chance of your Internet Marketing Campaign succeeding.

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Website User Friendliness- Your website must be easy to navigate and get right to the point. Most users don't want to spend too much time on website when they know what they are looking for. Easy Point-of-Sale - Make sure your website has the ability to process Credit Cards online in an easy manor. Complicated issues and many pages for purchases are a big turn off. Copy clear and Concise - Make sure your copy is easy to read and understand. Most people do not want million dollar words, just the facts. Spell Checking is a must.

The Top 10 E-marketing strategy issues of today and tomorrow?

Customer-centric e-marketing is: ApplyingDigital technologies which form online channels (Web, e-mail, databases, plus mobile/wireless & digital TV) to Contribute to marketing activities aimed at achieving profitable acquisition and retention of customers through improving our customer knowledge then delivering integrated targeted communications and online services that match their individual needs. Online channels should also be used to support the whole buying process from pre-sale to sale to post-sale and further development of customer relationships. The final part of the definition summarizes approaches to customer-centric e-marketing. It shows how it should be based on knowledge of customer needs developed by researching their characteristics, behavior, what they value, what keeps them loyal and then delivering tailored web and e-mail communications. Four years after the dot.com boom and bust there is now resurgence in investment in Emarketing. This resurgence has been driven by a combination of changes in consumer behavior and online services that have been refined to meet these consumer needs. This showed the following variation in popularity for browsing and purchasing products online: 64% browse for holidays online and 28% buy online. 58% browse for travel tickets and 37% buy online. 55% browse for music online and 26% buy online. 47% browse for books online and 31% buy online. 36% browse for electrical goods online and 20% buy online. 25% browse for clothes online and 16% buy online. 24% browse for financial products online and 10% buy online.

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Top ten strategic E-Marketing issues

Issue 1. The E-marketing planning process
The integration of e-marketing-specific objectives, strategies and activities into the traditional annual marketing planning process.

Issue 2. Organizing and resourcing for e-marketing

As the importance of online channels increases, the structure of the marketing organization and responsibilities may need to change to maximize the opportunities available through new media.

Issue 3. Defining the Internet value proposition (IVP)

To achieve increased customer usage of online channels (web, e-mail, wireless), a distinct, detailed proposition must be developed for these online channels and it must be clearly communicated online and offline.

Issue 4. E-brand value

How does the Internet contribute to and influence brands? Reputation management (or PR) how do we manage how third-party sites present the brand through proactive promotion of the brand and reactive limitation of negative PR? Viral marketing how do we use the efficiency of online networks to create involvement with a brand?

Issue 5. Setting the e-communications mix

Defining the proportion of online spend on different elements of the communications mix Percent of communications budget allocated to e-communications Online spend % on advertising, direct mail and PR Demonstrating return on investment for e-marketing tools Continuous vs. campaign spend Relative spend on different online tools, i.e. search, affiliates, online ads, rented email lists, online sponsorship, etc

Issue 6. E-mail marketing integration (Touch strategy)

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Integrating different forms of marketing e-mail, i.e. rented list, house list e-blasts, service emails and e-newsletters with traditional communications, i.e. direct mail, advertising, etc to achieve maximum response.

Issue 7. E-CRM
Using online channels (web, e-mail, wireless messaging linked to customer databases) to build and deepen relationships with customers. What methods do we use to target and personalize messages for online customers? How do we manage change associated with CRM? Which technologies do we select to support CRM? What level of customer service do we provide online and how do we control the level of online versus offline enquiries?

Issue 8. Building and exploiting customer knowledge

Customer knowledge is profiling information and research characterizing customers including their characteristics, communications preferences, behaviors and perception of service.

Issue 9. E-marketing automation

Developing personalized marketing messages delivered by web and e-mail in response to customer events and behaviors.

Issue 10. E-channel optimization

Developing a continuous improvement process to monitor the effectiveness of web and email marketing.

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Product Considerations
The exponential growth of the Internet and the World Wide Web presents significant opportunities for marketing products to both organizations and consumers. Through Emarketing strategies, companies can provide products, including goods, services, and ideas, that offer unique benefits and improve customer satisfaction. Computers and computer peripherals, industrial supplies, and packaged software are the leading organizational purchases online. Consumer products account for a small but growing percentage of Internet transactions, with securities trading, travel/tourism, and books among the hottest consumer purchases. The online marketing of goods such as computer hardware and software, books, videos, CDs, toys, automobiles, and even groceries is accelerating rapidly. Ideas, such as marriage counseling, medical advice, tax/legal advice, and even psychic services, are being marketed successfully online as well.

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Distribution Considerations
The role of distribution is to make products available at the right time at the right place in the right quantities. The ability to process orders electronically and to increase the speed of communications via the Internet provides marketers with an excellent opportunity to reduce physical distribution costs, speed communication and delivery times, and improve customer service. The interactivity characteristic of E-marketing also allows firms to develop closer working relationships with members of their supply chains. Thus, E-marketing can improve customer satisfaction by networking supply chain members to reduce inefficiencies, costs, and redundancies in the entire marketing channel. One of the most visible members of any marketing channel is the retailer, and the Internet is increasingly becoming a retail venue.

Promotion Considerations
The Internet is an interactive medium that can be used to inform, entertain, and persuade target markets to accept an organizations products. In fact, gathering information about products and services is one of the main reasons people saying they use the Internet. The accessibility and interactivity of the Internet present exciting opportunities for marketers to complement their traditional media usage for promotional efforts. The control characteristic of E-marketing means that customers who visit a firm's Web site are there because they choose to be, which implies that they are interested in the firms products and therefore can be at least somewhat involved in the message and dialogue provided by the firm.

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Advertising is a paid nonpersonal communication about an organization and its products that is transmitted to a target audience through a mass medium. Many companies augment their TV and print advertising campaigns with Web-based promotions. Thousands of wellknown firms, from The Coca-Cola Company to the Mead Corporation, from Target Stores to Century 21, have set up Web pages to tout their products, circulate company information, entertain and inform users, and interact with customers. Companies also use banner ads, which are small rectangular adsstatic or animatedthat typically appear at the top of a Web page, to promote themselves and/or their products on Internet portals and other Web sites.

Pricing Considerations
Pricing, which relates to perceptions of value, is the most flexible element of the marketing mix. E-marketing facilitates both price and nonprice competition because the accessibility characteristic of E-marketing gives consumers access to more information about the cost and price of products than has ever been available to them before.

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Dos and Donts of E-marketing

Make Sure Your Message is Making it Into the INBOX

In order to assure that your message is delivered, look to partner with an e-marketing expert who is intimate with the ins and outs of the system. They'll help you create productive relationships with major ISPs to prevent being blacklisted .It's also important to develop an effective tracking tool to make sure that your messages are arriving at their destinations.

Never Underestimate the Power of Your Word Choice

Technology wizards and standard-setters have partnered to create algorithm thresholds that trigger message rejections when you exceed certain standards or use too many "buzz" words.

If You Build it, they May Still Not Come

If you've developed your electronic presence based on input you've gathered from your customers, you are probably on strategically sound ground. But once you've got the foundation up, you have to drive customers to your site. Search engine marketers like Google, Overture and others are important allies to help drive this traffic. And they can be remarkably cost effective if you choose your approach wisely.

Before Advertising, Be Strategic

Unfortunately, the technological ability to deliver messages far exceeds our ability to effectively measure the actual impact of the message. Make sure you've enveloped online advertising use as part of your overall strategic marketing plan rather than as a stand alone. And never employ electronic gadgetry like pop-ups unless you've worked out your objectives and strategies thoroughly. Good Content + Bad Design = No Results Electronic marketing and the Internet in general are driven by emerging and evolving forms and functions. What works today may not even exist tomorrow. Most businesses are used to maximizing complete control over their marketing efforts. Make the use of e-marketing part of your greater plan and determine a list of realistic objectives with which to measure its effectiveness. Above all, treat visitors to your site with respect, honor their privacy, and avoid annoying and unresponsive practices. Building customer relationships, including via electronic media, begins with treating customers as you would want to be treated. That, coupled with smart application of the unique technological opportunities the Internet 28

presents for e-marketing, can help make the Internet a vital engine for overall business growth.

CUSTOMER LOYALTY THROUGH E-MARKETING

7 Key Strategies to Earn Customer Loyalty
1 - Earn your subscribers' trust - Honesty is essential to earning customers' trust, and that trust is the key to gaining customer loyalty. Earning customers trust is important to the success of any business. Being honest goes with not hiding anything. 2 - Give Them What They Want - When your subscribers sign up to your ezine, they are doing so for a reason. They want the information you are telling them they will receive. Keep giving them that, and theyll be happy as can be. Diverge from that, and you could find yourself losing subscribers quicker than you can get them. 3 - Dont send too many marketing messages - Two things you really need to watch, as a publisher, is how to advertise your product/ service and what product you endorse. 4 - Make your subscribers your friends - Give your subscribers a good sense of who you are. Its important that your subscribers see you as a real person, because they will likely never meet you in person. 5 - Over Deliver - Nothing makes people happier than knowing you pay attention to them. Make your customers and potential clients delighted by giving them more than they expected. 6 - Help Them Out - Besides giving your subscribers what they want, helping them with whatever they need help with is the best way to earn customer loyalty. Customer loyalty, measured in repeat purchases and referrals, is the key driver of profitability for online businesses, According to the research, the more often a customer visits a site, the more likely that customer will spend an increasing amount of money and generate more profits for the online retailer. The findings also found that loyal online

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customers, just like offline customers, spend more, refer more people and are more willing to expand their purchasing into new categories. Furthermore, online retailers, in most industries, must provide customers with fair, but not necessarily the lowest, prices. Delighting customers is the clear determinant of e-business success or failure. Online shoppers want their lives to be made simpler with the offline world as their benchmark. The concept of e-loyalty extends the traditional brand loyalty concept to online consumer behavior. Market savvy companies are integrating social networking concepts into their websites to build brand loyalty. These businesses are developing online communities to attract and retain consumers as well as drive online sales. Online communities are increasingly becoming part of the customer marketing and service strategy. With the rapid growth of E-commerce and on-line consumer shopping trends, the importance of building and maintaining customer loyalty in electronic marketplaces (e-loyalty) has come into sharper focus in marketing theory. Product customization and interactivity are two unique value propositions that contribute to e-loyalty in online buyer behavior. The combination of customer involvement in product design and a well-known brand with associated product quality and guarantees increases the probability that product performance meets customer expectations. A unique factor in e-loyalty is the critical role of the first impression created by a website as well as its ease of use - easy navigation, fast page loads, server reliability, quick shopping and checkout processes, and a personalized interface. Order fulfillment and rapid delivery systems are as critical to e-loyalty development as the other factors. A thoughtful logistics system that guarantees a fast delivery after the checkout process contributes to customer satisfaction, which in turn contributes to loyal behavior. . In B2C e-commerce suggest that effective customer support and services are vital to encourage customers to shop online as it is a lonely experience. In order to achieve optimum customer service, most industry is now realizing the need to provide online customer support called web-based customer service. The goal of web-based customer service is to give customers 24/7 access to easy, cost-effective online self-service. In the electronic commerce environment clients are more discerning with increased options and solutions available to them. The increased information available to marketers and advertisers, the streamlined supply chain, and the new retail channel, made possible by electronic commerce, significantly affect the satisfaction of customers, whether they are individual consumers or in other businesses. Online customer service such as easy search of products and services, provision of product specifications that reduce communication costs, secure electronic payment systems to complete transactions, updated product delivery information and quick responses to customer queries are important to win online customers and to make them keep coming back to the site for further purchases.

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The factors can be used to influence web-based customer service are including: (1) Fast response to customer inquiries (2) Easy to contact (3) Free to contact (4) Free online applications (5) Easy payment methods (6) Fast delivery (7) Delivery options (8) Customer reward system Order fulfillment and rapid delivery systems are as critical to e-loyalty development as the other factors. A thoughtful logistics system that guarantees a fast delivery after the checkout process contributes to customer satisfaction, which in turn contributes to loyal behavior. In addition to the speed of delivery, the logistics system should allow different ways of delivering products.For ebay, they have a strong and developed contact system, whether auto response or personalized response, customers always can get their wanted information related with their questions without any cost. A major benefit of customer relationship campaigns is that they foster customer retention, which in turn results in increased profits for your business. Existing customers are known to spend more per sale, buy more frequently, refer other customers and cost less per sale. So priority one is to keep your existing customers happy. However, every business needs to acquire new customers, and the emphasis on increasing revenue can sometimes relegate customer satisfaction objectives to the back burner. Savvy marketers wont make this mistake. Email is a cost-effective way to keep in touch with existing customers, increasing their level of satisfaction. This can be accomplished with messages that transmit useful and timely information that is appreciated and can potentially trigger future sales.

Following are some tips for a customer retention campaign.

1. Personalize Your Messages It is very important to use personalization, customizing your messages as much as possible. You already know a lot about your customers based on past behavior. Use that information to send customized content focused on relevant customer interests. A good analytics program can help you segment customers based on past behavior; then you can target messages to customers based on demonstrated interests. 2. Always Follow Up on Orders When customers do make a purchase, dont fail to send a thank you message by autoresponder. You can also follow up on how satisfactory the transaction was. Personalize the message by stating the date of purchase and the place of purchase Solicit the kind of information that shows you care and that can help you better meet their needs in the future. Most people love to give feedback, especially when they think your process can be improved. 31

3. Do Some Up-Sells and Cross-Sells When prospects respond to your offer in a marketing campaign, you can later send up-sell and cross-sell messages. You can send customers information on products related to current purchases. This is why customer relationship campaigns are worthwhile, they can provide in-depth information about your customers and prospects for use in future campaigns. 4. Use Transactional and Service Messages Transactional and service email messages can be created and delivered within a fairly short time. Some can be created weeks or months ahead, such as your service updates and renewals. When you notify your customers of an approaching sale over specific dates, this also creates customer satisfaction, particularly when the sale items are relevant to customer needs. Loyal Customers Bring Repeat Business. Satisfy your current customers and new ones will follow. Be creative in keeping your current customers happy. If you do not have an email customer satisfaction program in place, start one now.

SCOPE OF E-MARKEITNG IN INDIA

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Some facts : Small towns are growing the internet user base Youth are the biggest segment on the internet Broadband is the new face of internet connectivity Internet access from home is gaining prominence 50 million users will experience the internet by march 2012 E-mail and chat are no longer primary internet traffic drive 38% internet users clock of 8 hrs per week on the internet The dawn of the internet era opened up amazing new possibilities. India has also joined the bandwagon and the numbers themselves do all the talking. The latest statistics* reveal that 400 million people access internet regularly in India and that is jump of 700% in last six years. If you too want to hop into the online business, the first aspect is developing/ hosting of your website.

SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING

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Search Engine is defined as a program that searches documents for particular keywords and gives back a list of the documents where the related term or content is found. Search engine works by co-coordinating a set of programmes that includes a spider also known as crawler that collects as many documents as possible. The second programme termed as indexer reads these documents and creates an index based on the words contained in each document. And lastly a programme that receives your search request, compares it to the entries in the index, and returns results to you The world-wide search market is forecast to grow from US $2.1 billion in 2003 to US $7 billion by 2013. However, against the background of a rapidly consolidating search market, there are increasingly sophisticated technology tools and approaches to utilizing search engines to achieve marketing goalsIt generates new business, and it increases brand awareness. For people serious about increasing website traffic, online advertising is a natural choice specifically targeted at internet savvy users searching for services that relate to your website. Search engines are playing an increasingly important role in Internet marketing and commerce.Rs. 230 crores of ad spend on this media is aimed at Indians alone. Of this, about a third, over Rs. 70 crores is spent by Indian companies. For an industry that barely got off the ground a couple of years ago, it's a huge leap. 37m internet users in India in September 2006. Search Engine Marketing is now a US$14 billion business (Rs. 63,000 crores). This is expected to grow to 42m by March 2007 and 52m by March 2008.

Some Experiences And Results Scope Exposure ROI And the Internet

that

Created Happiness Human

Creativity

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Early search engines

1994 was a big year in the history of Web search. The first hierarchical directory, Galaxy, was launched in January and, in April, Stanford students David Filo and Jerry Yang created Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle, better known as Yahoo!.During that same month, Brian Pinkerton at the University of Washington released WebCrawler. This, the first true Web search engine, indexed the entire contents of Web pages, where previous crawlers had indexed little more than page titles, headings, and URLs. Lycos was launched a few months later. By the end of 1995, nearly a dozen major search engines were online. Names like MetaCrawler (the first metasearch engine), Magellan, Infoseek, and Excite (born out of the Architext project) were released into cyberspace throughout the year. AltaVista arrived on the scene in December with a stunningly large database and many advanced features, and Inktomi debuted the following year. Webmasters and content providers began optimizing sites for search engines in the mid1990s, as the first search engines were cataloging the early Web. Initially, all a webmaster needed to do was submit a page, or URI, to the various engines which would send a spider to "crawl" that page, extract links to other pages from it, and return information found on the page to be indexed. The process involves a search engine spider downloading a page and storing it on the search engine's own server, where a second program, known as an indexer, extracts various information about the page, such as the words it contains and where these are located, as well as any weight for specific words, as well as any and all links the page contains, which are then placed into a scheduler for crawling at a later date. Site owners started to recognize the value of having their sites highly ranked and visible in search engine results, creating an opportunity for both "white hat" and "black hat" SEO practitioners. At first, search engines were supplied with information about pages by the webmasters themselves. Early versions of search algorithms relied on webmaster-provided information such as the keyword meta tag, or index files in engines like ALIWEB. Metatags provided a guide to each page's content. But indexing pages based upon meta data was found to be less than reliable, mostly because webmasters abused meta tags by including keywords that had nothing to do with the content of their pages, to artificially increase page impressions for their Website and increase their Ad Revenue. Cost Per Impression was at the time the common means of monetizing content websites. Inaccurate, incomplete, and inconsistent meta data in meta tags caused pages to rank for irrelevant searches, and fail to rank for relevant searches. [5] Search engines responded by developing more complex ranking algorithms, taking into account additional factors including: Text within the title element Domain name

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URL directories and file names HTML tags: headings, emphasized (<em>) and strongly emphasized (<strong>) text Term frequency, both in the document and globally, often misunderstood and mistakenly referred to as Keyword density On page keyword proximity On page keyword adjacency On page keyword sequence Alt attributes for images Text within NOFRAMES tags Web content development

Some of the latest search engines are :

Google
The search engine Google, rose to prominence around 2001. While its success is based in part on the concept of link popularity and PageRank on the ground that essential pages are linked to more than others are, many other web sites and web pages link to a given page is taken into consideration with PageRank. The PageRank of linking pages and the number of links on these pages contribute to the PageRank of the linked page. Google in this way has made possible to order its results by how many web sites link to each found page thus resulting in Google's minimalist user interface to be very popular with users, although it has since then spawned a number of imitators.

Yahoo! Search
Yahoo! initially used Google to provide its users with search results on its main web site Yahoo.com despite owning its own search engine. In the meantime, Yahoo! acquired Inktomi In 2002 and Overture (which owned AlltheWeb and AltaVista) in 2003. Later, when Yahoo! launched its own search engine in 2004, based on the combined technologies of its acquisitions; it had the potential of providing a service that gave pre-eminence to the Web search engine over the directory.

Microsoft

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MSN Search, owned by Microsoft is the most recent and major search engine launched. While it previously relied on others for its search engine listings, it started off by introducing a beta version of its own results, powered by its own web crawler called msnbot in the year 2004 which started showing its own search results live in early 2005. This came as a huge development for many webmasters, who seek inclusion in the major search engines, even if it went unnoticed to average users who were unaware of where results are coming from. For instance, a search for hotel room in Bombay returned 5,750,000 results on Google, 1,270,000 results on Yahoo and 228,004 results on MSN.

The basics of search engine marketing...

A typical search engine results page has three major components: crawler-based listings, sponsored listings, and directory listings. Not all SERPs contain all three elements; some portals incorporate additional data sources depending on the search term used. Keywords & Search Terms The first step is to learn about the search terms that your target audience is using when using search engines. These search terms are the keywords and keyphrases that will be used to market your web site. Search Engine Optimization Step two addresses how to make basic web site design changes that will make your site more search engine friendly. Search Engine Submission After you've gone through the search engine optimization process, it's time to get your site listed in the various search engines and directories. Link Popularity Link popularity is a major factor when it comes to ranking well in search engines and drawing traffic to your site. In step four, you will learn how to increase the number of links to your site, how to get quality sites to link to yours, and the overall effect link popularity has on your rankings. Paid Inclusion If you would rather not wait for the search engines to find and index your site on their own, you can pay to be indexed faster. With step five, you will learn if paid inclusion is a viable option for you. Pay Per Click Search Engines Pay per click search engines and pay per click advertising provides web site owners the opportunity to buy their way to better positions on search results pages. Step six looks at this form of advertising.

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Log File and Traffic Analysis Your site's log files contain a wealth of information about the effectiveness of your web site marketing programs. With your log files, you can learn how your visitors are finding your site, what search terms they are using to find it, and which are the best sources of traffic for your site. Google's PageRank Although Google's PageRank is but one factor Google uses to determine its search results, it is a popular topic. Step eight provides basic information to help you better understand the importance of PageRank.

What is a keyword?
A keyword is defined as a word or phrase that a user believes is relevant to the information he or she is seeking. Once the user enters the keyword, the search engine starts examining each record in its database to find those documents that match the keywords. A keyword search (as opposed to a concept search) is a search for documents containing one or more words specified by the user.

The Role of keywords within Natural Results

The use of keyword in Meta tags of a site and throughout the website content is an important aspect of search engine optimization (SEO). In particular, the density, the placement and the actual keywords themselves are hotly debated topics. The role of keywords in any good SEO programme is unarguable but the regular change in algorithm by search engines makes it difficult to keep up with the current best practice. However, some good practices that always ring true regardless of how you personally approach SEO. As with organic results, paid results are "matched" to the keywords that consumers type into search engines while looking for goods and services. But the process of selecting keyword for a paid listing campaign is different. When a website is listed well in the organic search results, the website usually is found for not only their chosen keywords but many combinations of keyword phrases related to those chosen keywords. Its those other combinations of related keywords that bring a website a lot of more visibility in the search results, frequently causing a website appear to be found for everything related to a certain industry. High competitive keywords are those keywords that are more convertible and have the ability of producing more revenue for the search engine through their bidding for the rank

Sitemaps
Web content providers also manipulated a number of attributes within the HTML source of a page in an attempt to rank well in search engines.

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By relying so much upon factors exclusively within a webmaster's control, early search engines suffered from abuse and ranking manipulation. To provide better results to their users, search engines had to adapt to ensure their SERPs showed the most relevant search results, rather than unrelated pages stuffed with numerous keywords by unscrupulous webmasters. This led to the rise of a new kind of search engine.

How Search Engines Work?

Search engine functions by the co-coordination of a set of programmes which includes Web crawling Indexing Searching

Web crawling
The function of a Web search engine is to store information about a large number of web pages, which they retrieve from the WWW itself. These pages retrieved by a web crawler (sometimes also known as a spider) are an automated web browser that follows every link it sees, contemplating exclusions that can made by the use of robots.txt.

Indexing
Then follows the analysis of the contents of each page to determine how it has to be indexed; like, the words that are to be extracted from the titles, headings, or special fields called Meta tags. Such data about web pages is then stored in an index database for use in later queries. Search engines, for instance Google, store all or part of the source page (referred to as a cache) as well as information about the web pages, whereas some search engine like AltaVista stores every word of every page it finds. Since it is the page that was actually indexed, the cached page always holds the actual search text, which can be very useful at times when the content of the current page has been updated and the search terms are no longer in it. While this problem may be a mild form of linkrot, Google's handling of it increases its usability by satisfying user expectations so that the search terms will be on the returned web page. Since the user on the web normally expects the search terms to be on the returned pages, the principle of least astonishment is 39

satisfied. Advanced search relevance makes these cached pages more useful, even beyond the fact that may contain data, which might not be available elsewhere.

High-level architecture of a standard web crawler

Searching
A user while using a search engine starts making a query, typically by giving key words. The Search engine then spiders the index and provides a listing of best-matching web pages according to its criteria, generally with a short summary containing the document's title and in some cases as parts of the text. While most of the search engines support the use of the Boolean terms like AND, OR and NOT to further specify the search query, an advanced feature of search engine is proximity search, which permits you to define the distance between keywords. While the functional benefit of a search engine depends on the relevance of the result set it gives back, most search engines employ methods to rank the results to provide the "best" results first. However, the parameters set by a search engine to decide which pages are the best matches, and the order in which the results has to be shown, varies widely from one engine to another. Most web search engines are commercial ventures supported by

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advertising revenue as a result; some employ the controversial practice of allowing advertisers to pay money to have their listings ranked higher in search results.

Methods of Search Engine Marketing

1. Search engine optimization :
It attempts to improve rankings for relevant keywords in search results by improving a web site's structure, content, and relevant backlink count. SEO aims to index and improve rankings for the webpages which are most relevant to the keywords searched for according to the algorithm of each search engine. The relevant pages are returned in search engine results pages (SERPS). It is important to remember that genuine search engine optimizers are basically marketers who keep their target market in mind as much as the search engine algorithms (a lot of which is known purely empirically). Therefore, while we call this process search engine optimization, good marketers will note that their focus is to optimize their web page for the search engine user, who is their target audience. For instance, at one time it was believed that keyword density was an important ranking factor, but today that view is not generally held among SEO professionals. Today, many SEOs recommend writing copy for visitors first, because the web site cannot achieve its marketing objectives with "unnatural" sounding text, laden with keywords. Search engine optimization often involves more than just rankings. By improving the quality of a page's search listings, more users will select that page. Factors that may improve search listing quality include good copywriting such as an attention-grabbing title, an interesting description and a domain and URL that reinforce the legitimacy of the site Search spiders then can scan all necessary data about the whole site and store it in the search engines' data base. A good navigation system has other benefits also, such as helping to improve user experience. Both the number of inbound links to the site as well as the 'quality' of the links heavily influences the rankings of a site in the search engine. Search engine algorithms are evolutionary and strive to develop every day in an attempt to provide the most relevant and useful pages to the users and strike out the websites that trick them to attain higher positions for a while. These processes are known as Organic or Algorithmic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of websites. Search engine optimization takes considerable time and, as such, many sites make use of Pay-per-Click (PPC) to market their website without having to wait for the results of Organic SEO. However, organic search results can get viewed and clicked on frequently, so a dual strategy of SEO and PPC can provide more exposure than either strategy alone. Search Engine Marketers = Ad Agencies

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Search engine marketers dealing with paid listings are very similar to ad agencies in offline media. They work with the message and the creative to get people to take action: to buy, subscribe or register. They have budgets and are able to monitor results and tweak campaigns to get the maximum return for their clients. It's pretty easy to see the parallels between SEMs and ad agencies, but a little harder to understand the role of search engine optimizers, as they relate to the "free" search listings. Search Engine Optimizers = Public Relations Firms A search engine optimizer is actually very similar to a public relations firm in the offline world. Public relations firms try to get their clients mentioned in news stories and featured in print and broadcast media, i.e., they obtain "free" publicity. An SEO consultant attempts to get their client's site listed highly in the "editorial" or "free" listings of the search engines. As with offline media, the editorial content (or listings) often carries more credibility with consumers.

Classifications
SEO techniques are classified by some into two broad categories: techniques that search engines recommend as part of good design and those techniques that search engines do not approve of and attempt to minimize the effect of, referred to as spamdexing. Most professional SEO consultants do not offer spamming and spamdexing techniques amongst the services that they provide to clients. Some industry commentators classify these methods, and the practitioners who utilize them, as either "white hat SEO", or "black hat SEO".

Preferred "White hat" methods

An SEO tactic, technique or method is considered "White hat" if it conforms to the search engines' guidelines and/or involves no deception. As the search engine guidelines are not written as a series of rules or commandments, this is an important distinction to note. White Hat SEO is not just about following guidelines, but is about ensuring that the content a search engine indexes and subsequently ranks is the same content a user will see. White Hat advice is generally summed up as creating content for users, not for search engines, and then makes that content easily accessible to their spiders, rather than game the system. White hat SEO is in many ways similar to web development that promotes accessibility, although the two are not identical.

Spamdexing "Black hat" methods

"Black hat" SEO are methods to try to improve rankings that are disapproved of by the search engines and/or involve deception. This can range from text that is "hidden", either as text colored similar to the background or in an invisible or left of visible div, or by redirecting users from a page that is built for search engines to one that is more human

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friendly. A method that sends a user to a page that was different from the page the search engined ranked is Black hat as a rule. One well known example is Cloaking, the practice of serving one version of a page to search engine spiders/bots and another version to human visitors.Search engines may penalize sites they discover using black hat methods, either by reducing their rankings or eliminating their listings from their databases altogether. Such penalties can be applied either automatically by the search engines' algorithms or by a manual review of a site. One infamous example was the February 2006 Google removal of both BMW Germany and Ricoh Germany for use of deceptive practices.Both companies, however, quickly apologized, fixed the offending pages, and were restored to Google's list.

Benefits of Search Engine Optimization

1. Boost rankings: If your site is on the 100th page of search engine results it wont be seen by anyone. Most people will click on the sites that appear on the first page. Some may search further if they dont have success finding the information. 2. Increase traffic: Web traffic will increase in proportion to your rankings. 3. Targeted traffic: Optimizing your web pages for specific keyword brings you traffic targeting those keywords. 4. Increase sales or subscribers: A site that gains good search engine rankings and has powerful copy will produce more sales or subscribers than one that isnt optimized. 5. Improve conversion rates: The purpose of your site is to convert visitors into buyers. Optimizing the copy on your web pages means you will only receive visitors that are interested in your specific topic then move them to purchase your product, service or subscribe to your newsletter. 6. Increased Usability: To increase the usability of your website this means more people will find the Website, which can translate to increased sales and lead generation. Perform Keyword Research: Using publicly available tools such as Wordtracker, you can identify the keywords that are searched most frequently, then specifically target those phrases. 200-Word Content Minimum per Page: Quite simply, search engines love content -the more content on a page, the easier it is for search engines to work out what that page is actually about. Use Meaningful Page Titles Opening Paragraph Describes Page Content

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Avoid Frames Descriptive Link Text

7. Better Search Ranking 1. Assign ALT Descriptions to Images: Screen readers, which are used by many visually impaired Web users, can't understand images. To ensure accessibility, an alternative description needs to be assigned to every image; the screen reader will read out this alternative, or ALT, description: <img src="filename.Gif" alt="image description goes here" />

Display Text Through HTML, Not Images: Text embedded in images appears pixelated, blurry, and is often unreadable by those who use screen magnifiers. From an accessibility point of view, text embedded in images should therefore be avoided. Separate design from content using CSS and HTML and keep your presentation and layout in a separate file. Website Functions with JavaScript Disabled

8. Alternatives to Flash-Based Content Provided 9. Site Map Provided

SEO and marketing

SEO, as a marketing strategy, can often generate a good return. However, as the search engines are not paid for the traffic they send from organic search, the algorithms used can and do change; there are no guarantees of success, either in the short or long term. Due to this lack of guarantees and certainty, SEO is often compared to traditional Public Relations (PR), with PPC advertising closer to traditional advertising. Increased visitors are analogous to increased foot traffic in retail advertising. Increased traffic may be detrimental to success if the site is not prepared to handle the traffic or visitors are generally dissatisfied with what they find. In either case increased traffic does not guarantee increased sales or success. While endeavoring to meet the guidelines posted by search engines can help build a solid foundation for success on the web, such efforts are only a start. SEO is potentially more

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effective when combined with a larger marketing campaign strategy. Despite SEO potential to respond to the latest changes in market trends, SEO alone is reactively following market trends instead of pro-actively leading market trends. Many see search engine marketing as a larger umbrella under which search engine optimization fits, but it's possible that many who focused primarily on SEO in the past are incorporating more and more marketing ideas into their efforts, including public relations strategy and implementation, online display media buying, web site transition SEO, web trends data analysis, HTML E-mail campaigns, and business blog consulting making SEO firms more like an ad agency.

2. Pay Per Click

PPC advertising uses sponsored search engine listings to drive traffic to a web site. The advertiser bids for search terms, and the search engine ranks ads based on a competitive auction as well as other factors. Advertising with search engines is known by different names. It is also called sponsored search and search engine advertising. The most popular programs are offered by Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft. Some offer PPC, where the advertiser is only charged when a user clicks on the ad, also known as Cost Per Click (CPC). Others use a Cost Per Impression (CPM) model where advertisers are charged for impressions. Ads can take many forms, including text, banner ads, video ads, map ads, and even audio ads.

Advertising based on a keyword search

Advertising based on a keyword search could take place through a search engine such as google.com, or a search engine partner site, such as shopping.com. For example, Google offers a service called AdWords, which allows companies, for a small fee, to have a link to their website featured when a user searches a specific keyword which the company specified.

Advertising based on content context

Many search engines (e.g. Google, Ask.com, and Yahoo! Search) have partner websites with specific content. The websites agree to let the search engines place content-specific advertising on their website, in return for a fee. The search engine then finds companies

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interested in advertising on websites with their desired content. For example, an online dog food retailer might have their advertisement placed on a site about dogs. Both of these advertising formats allow advertisers to target specific users with certain interests. Generally these advertisements are paid for based on either a pay per click campaign or an impression based campaign.

3. Paid Inclusion
It can provide a guarantee that the website is included in the search engine's natural listings. However, as of 2006 the leading search engine, Google, does not offer this service. Search engines use computer programs called spiders or web crawlers to automatically discover websites and catalog their content. As this process can take some time and requires a website to be linked to from another website (to allow the crawler to find it), most search engines except for Google provide another channel to be included in search rankings via paying. This is different from pay per click advertising because the inclusion is guaranteed but not placement.

Understanding Search Engines

Search Sites or Search Engines like Yahoo, Google, MSN, are the second most popular thing on the internet, next to eMail. Understanding how they work will help marketers learn how to leverage search engines as a marketing tool.

How Search Engines Find a Site

The search engine doesnt go out to the Internet to find its results instead, it accesses its internal database of sites that has visited and indexed previously. The search engine wont consider your site for search result if it does not recognize your site. Search Engines generally reckons a site in two ways : The first is by following a link to the site. While many sites offer free submission options for site owners to submit their sites, most offer some form of paid submission program. In return, the search sites agree to review the pages faster and more frequently, daily instead of every six weeks or so. The second and the more valuable way is when the search engine follows a link from another site to yours. Search Engines send out automated spiders to crawl the web, reporting what they find. For instance, Google places a great deal of weight on the number and quality of links it finds to your site. 46

Links are critical to also getting all the pages within your site read by search engines. Sites with dynamic content, secure pages, complex links, etc, can pose challenges for search engine spiders. This is why it is important to review your log files to see when search engine spiders visit your site so you can manage the submission process appropriately. Moving Your Site to the Top of the Results Search engine optimization is not a rocket science, its just a process of careful planning and continual refinement based on results. Search Engines are continuing to refine their approach, to accurately read and digest what the user would see. Punishment for unethical activities is also a part of it because search engines continuously try to prevent the manipulation of the results. While there are issues that only relate to search engine readability, optimizing for high search engine rankings should complement efforts to design for human visitors. The site should be easy to read and navigate, containing phrases and keywords familiar to readers. Links from other sites increase the visibility of your site to visitors from that site, as well as search engine spiders.

Getting into search engines databases

However, Google and Yahoo offer submission programs, such as Google Sitemaps, for which an XML type feed can be created and submitted. Generally, however, a simple link from a site already indexed will get the search engines to visit a new site and begin spidering its contents. It can take a few days or even weeks from the acquisition of a link from such a site for all the main search engine spiders to begin indexing a new site, and there is usually not much that can be done to speed up this process. Once the search engine finds a new site, it uses a crawler program to retrieve and index the pages on the site. Pages can only be found when linked to with visible hyperlinks. However, some search engines, such as Google, are starting to read links created within Flash.

Blocking robots
Webmasters can instruct spiders not to crawl certain files or directories through the standard robots.txt file in the root directory of the domain. Additionally, a page can be explicitly excluded from a search engine's database by using a meta tag specific to robots. When a search engine visits a site, the robots.txt located in the root directory is the first file crawled. The robots.txt file is then parsed, and will instruct the robot as to which pages are

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not to be crawled. As a search engine crawler may keep a cached copy of this file, it may on occasion crawl pages a webmaster does not wish crawled. Pages typically prevented from being crawled include login specific pages such as shopping carts and user-specific content such as search results from internal searches.

Natural search vs Paid search

Internet advertising is gaining a large share of the advertisers spend, and search marketing has a lot to do with it. According to a study in the US, Internet ad revenues will touch $ 18 billion in 2007, and with the growing popularity of search marketing, the advertisers dependence on graphic ads/banners will reduce dramatically. While paid search involves high risks and high returns, marketers shouldnt ignore the benefits of natural search, Thomas said. A good balance of the two is necessary. Natural search is the core offering of any search engine, so it is important to invest in it, too, he said. This can be done by altering the content on ones website to make sure it shows up on the ever important first page of the search engine results. He gave the three-step eBay example, explaining how natural search can be best used. The first step of the ladder is keyword generation. A marketer needs to link certain relevant keywords with his site, so that when the surfer searches for that word, his site is thrown up. The second step is trafficking, in which creative and landing page optimization are highlighted. When a surfer lands on the website after using a search engine, he is sometimes taken to the home page of the site. That is okay, but an even better option is to ensure that his landing page is a relevant one, where the information he is looking for is present, Thomas added. Thirdly, monitoring is important, including constantly updating keywords. Pull out those youre losing money on, Thomas advised. He also cautioned those present on spam practices. A website owner must ensure his site has unique, good quality content, which should not be duplicated as far as possible. Search engines are like bazaars; one always gets more than what one asked for. search marketing might even build brands; if a surfer becomes loyal to a site as a result of search marketing, then nothing like it.

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Revenue Model of Search Engine

This process of bidding has been a boon for search engines getting them huge revenue growth and it has allowed companies to get the positions they want on the search terms they want, by simply out-bidding the competition. Typically, bidding starts at US$0.05 per click and goes up from there. Per-click bids of up to US$50 have been seen on some search terms from some geographies. With this huge range of bids (a 1000x difference between the top and the bottom of the range) it is important for a search advertiser to keep tight control on what they're paying for. Because the price for an ad is not set by the medium but by your competition, it is easy to overspend. Hence it is critical for an advertiser to find search terms that are relevant to their consumers Revenue is undoubtedly the driving force for search engines and this allimportant revenue comes from advertisers. Advertisers choose to have their ads appear when specific keywords are entered. These ads can be in the form of graphic banners of all shapes, text links, or even the dreaded pop-ups on some search sites. Online advertisements on search engines can be differentiated into two categories: Impression based and Cost-Per-Click Based. Impression based advertisements are mostly graphical ad units and offer some form of branding in addition to being a direct response vehicle. Advertisers pay search sites to advertise in specific categories or for specific keywords, paying for each time the ad appears, or impression. The performance based advertising i.e. the Cost-Per-Click (CPC) is the most familiar form of search engine advertisement. In this arrangement, advertisers bid on keywords, agreeing to pay a certain amount for each person that clicks on the ad. Advertisers have extreme flexibility in the amount of spending and placement of these text ads. The amount bid for a 49

key phrase determines the position of the advertisement on the page, with the highest bidders being placed higher on the page.

Separating Natural Listings and Paid Listings

Search engines display both natural and paid results on their result page; the natural results are the search sites best attempt at answering your question and the reason most users visits the site. The paid listings are how the search sites stay in business.

Bid words
Keywords are priced anywhere between Rs 2.50 and Rs 2,500 ($50) in India. Some of the more highly bid keywords, with their current bids for a top position, are: Discount hotel Rs 95.40 cost-per-click; Stock broker Rs 81.90 cost-per-click; Cheap hotel Rs 78.75 cost-perclick; Flight to Mumbai Rs 72 cost-per-click; MBA Rs 58.95 cost-per-click; Laptop Rs 53.10 cost-per-click; Cheap flight Rs 52.65 cost-per-click

Pricing
The pricing of keywords is directly proportional to the number of advertisers. On Yahoo's recently launched search engine marketing platform, the keyword `travel' had a highest bid of Rs 55. Interestingly, `hote;' also had been bid, for Rs 5.5! The fact that a typo could dish out an ad is an example of the amazing flexibility of the Internet! `Books' was bid at Rs 27 and `flight' at Rs 48. `Bangalore real estate' was bid for Rs 46, while `Delhi real estate' was at Rs 28.

Online advertising
Sulekha.com spends around Rs 4 crore a year on online advertising, including keyword advertising. Social networking site Fropper.com bids on 12-15 keywords, ranging from internationally used `dating services' and `friendship', to a more local combination of `Mumbai dating', said Mr. Raj Seth, Product Manager, Fropper.com. The search engine would review your ad for its performance. You could be charged a lesser price for the keyword compared to what your competitor, whose campaign performance is bad, has bid on for the same word. This is on the basis of the conversion rate - as the search engine earns more from your better ad, it offers you a better price. The lesson is for advertisers: it may be wiser to focus on your ad, than depend on the Internet to bring in the crowd.

Organic & Sponsored Listing: Getting in Early on New Market Edges

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Each time a new vertical search service or content distribution type comes about it offers a quick and easy opportunity to help you boost your exposure. If you get in a market before it is saturated there is likely going to be less competing content fewer and weaker social barriers to break through fewer signals of quality that are usable to organize information (thus if you title / label it smartly you won half the battle right there) less of a requirement to be citation worthy larger margin per unit effort

What is Organic search engine listing?

An "organic" search engine listing is a free listing of a site, usually found by a search engine's spider and then ranked by relevancy according to the search engine's methodology. It is also known as natural listings - the unpaid portion of a search engines results page. A 'free' or 'unpaid' listing that appears on a search results page. These listings can be achieved using SEO techniques.Top organic listings are obtained by performing keyword analysis and content optimization. Organic listings act much like free advertising after the initial setup. Some maintenance is required to keep these listings though. The web is constantly growing and new competitors are constantly being added to search engine indexes.

Search Engines Branding Strategy

Customer Acquisition through Satisfaction Customers rely on search engines and Search engines have been very influential in providing them relevant and up to date information. The process of customer acquisition through satisfaction goes through a sequence of steps that is defined as below: Providing free and relevant information depending upon users query and preference. Search engines typically focused on search and never diverted from their model. Trusted information and quality of the data Regular update of information database Frequent review of content on websites 51

Search engines have been able to build a brand for themselves over the past few years by virtue of customer satisfaction, improved, efficient and quality search services. The overall branding concept has changed considering the diversity of different industry around the world. Search engines follow completely different model of business. Major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN have different branding strategy and they all had set different criteria to build a brand but the benchmark was satisfaction among online searchers. Google has been successful enough to cash on its image of a trusted search engine by branding itself as a Brand Google.

How search engines improved market share?

With increased customer satisfaction and better user results, the search engines have been able to improve their market share with major competitors competing for top notch position. However, Google still remains the leader in the market share. ComScore Networks this week released its monthly qSearch analysis of activity across competitive search engines. In January 2006, Google reinforced its status as market leader of the US search market with a 41.4 percent share of all searches submitted, up more than 6 share points versus year ago.Yahoo! Maintained the second-place spot in the ranking with 28.7 percent share of all searches, while MSN ranked third capturing 13.7 percent of all online searches. Google Sites won top honors in share of tool bar search, capturing 49.5 percent of all tool bar searches, while Yahoo! Sites secured 45.5 percent.

Mantra for Search

Experiment Be the first mover Scale vertically before you scale horizontally Mix of Organic and Paid Variety of creative Connect through out the cycle Customize Targeted Advertising

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Facilitate conversion Monitor end to end Keep building

Advantages of search marketing

Targeted reach Search marketing offers precise targeting. In the online world, a consumer can search for low sugar recipes or find an ad related to the topic, and immediately go to the product website to evaluate or purchase. Control The marketer has control over the message, budget and other parameters of a campaign. You can edit your ads and adjust your budget until you get the results you want. You can also display a variety of ad formats and even target your ads to specific languages and geographic locations. Search marketing offers unmatched flexibility one can start a campaign in no time, adjust or modify the campaign real time and monitor results. Measurable Value - There's no minimum spending requirement or time commitment in the case of search marketing products such as Google AdWords. And with the cost-per-click option, you pay for performance. This means every rupee of your budget goes toward bringing new prospects for the business. Range Search marketing provides the most cost effective way of targeting audiences across the globe. It helps small businesses reach large audiences across the world as well as large businesses reach a consumer one-to-one.

Search engine scenario of India

The search engine marketing business is a $10 billion industry worldwide. India is emerging as a lucrative destination for online advertisers on search engines. According to a study by the Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), as many as 65m people use search engines in India, the market for which is estimated at Rs 236 crore.

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India still forms only a fraction of this big opportunity, which is $10bn globally and is expected to touch $23bn in the next four years. Search engine marketing (SEM) is catching up with advertisers because it helps a company reach a consumer when he is actually looking to buy something, unlike media ads, which may not reach the prospective buyer, said Mahesh Murthy, CEO, pinStorm, a Mumbai-based company which writes ads for companies who sponsor on search engines. Around Rs 236 crore are spent by marketers on the online media to target Indian users, and out of this, Indian advertisers spends are about Rs 72 crore. There were 291 brands that spent more than Rs 10 lakh per year in India, while the number of Indian advertisers who spent that much was 90. Globally, while there are 6,50,000 advertisers who use search engines, India has only 41,000 such advertisers, says the IAMAI study. The advertising business on any search engine is a complex one. Companies bid in real time to book space on the first page of a result. Thus, it is not necessary that if you see a companys ad on No 1 slot, the same would be there if you visit the page the next time. Also, the decision of choosing a search engine depends on reputation ranking, which, in turn, depends on global brands endorsing a search engine, said Mr. Murthy. The biggest myth probably in the SEM is that most of internet surfers dont click on sponsored links. But the IAMAI study claims that sponsored links are clicked around 5m times a month. The supporters of SEM claim that the click-through rate, which is the number of times an ad is clicked, is quite high, at 0.62%. It says that over one billion Indians use search and the total clicks by users on sponsored links are about 4.8 million. The number of advertisers targeting this huge user base exceeded 40,000 people. Around Rs 236 crore are spent by marketers on the online media to target Indian users, and out of this, Indian advertisers spends are about Rs 72 crore. There were 291 brands that spent more than Rs 10 lakh per year in India, while the number of Indian advertisers who spent that much was 90. The average number of keywords bought by a brand was 42 and the report says that the average cost per click paid by an advertiser in India was Rs 16.20. Here are some analyses of a few sectors based on spends. The top three sectors based on the estimated annual spends in India were travel, banking and financial services, general online companies, retail e-commerce, jobs, made-forAdsense, etc. Of these, the general online category ranked first followed by retail ecommerce and then travel. In the travel sector, the top three advertisers (based on spends) were Yahoo! Travel (Rs 1 crore), Lufthansa (around Rs.0.95 crore) and Make My Trip (around Rs 0.9 crore). In the banking and financial services sector, Citibank, with a spend of Rs 2.7 crore, HSBC, which 54

spent Rs 1.1 crore, and ICICI Bank, with Rs 0.9 crore, emerged the top three spenders on search marketing. Among the job search companies, Naukri, which spent Rs 8 crore, topped the list and Monster India, which spent around Rs 5.5 crore, came second, followed by Yahoo! Jobs India, the spends of which were as low as Rs 1 crore. Among the dating and matrimony sectors, Shaadi.com spent around Rs 1.2 crore, followed by Jeevansathi, which spent Rs 0.6 crore. Among general advertisers, Google emerged the highest spender; spending around Rs 7 crore (in-house spend). In the retail e-commerce sector, e-Bay spent the highest, Rs 9.5 crore, followed by Kijiji, which spent around Rs 1 crore on search marketing. Pinstorm founder and CEO Mahesh Murthy says, "22 of the top 50 and 37 of the top 100 search advertisers by keyword volume are from within Indian operations. India produces over a billion online searches each month and the number is growing as people research choices, product details and prices for every sot of buying decision. These range from travel to insurance, education and even a film career." The top five spenders are all Internet companies: Naukri, together with 99acres and Jeevan Saathi Rs 97 million; Ebay Rs 92 million; Monster together with JobsAhead Rs 64 million; Google Rs 58 million; Yahoo Rs 32 million; Citibank Rs 27 million; HP Rs 25 million; World Space Rs 20 million. In terms of sectors spending on search advertising this is what the break up looks like: Retail, ecommerce Rs 189,679,644 Technology Rs 116,153,190 Travel Rs 173,650,230 Automotive Rs 10,321,020 Banking, Financial Services Rs 145,039,410 Dating, Matrimonial Rs 31,681,530 Education Rs 24,571,674 General Online Rs 227,842,308 Jobs Rs 175,270,878 Media Rs 41,113,170 Made for Ad Sense Rs 155,725,416 NGO Rs 11,697,696 Property Rs 25,517,916 The study notes that you can never have too many keywords. Search engines including Google recently announced that almost half of their search enquiries have never been asked before. One needs to keep adding to the keyword list and also think of things that have not occurred to the competition. Travel sites routinely buy and deploy over three million keywords each on search marketing campaigns. Longer phrases convert better. While paid 55

search involves high risks and high returns, marketers shouldnt ignore the benefits of natural search, Thomas said. A good balance of the two is necessary. Lalla quipped over the theory that search marketing might even build brands; if a surfer becomes loyal to a site as a result of search marketing, then nothing like it. Thomas of eBay felt it was too early to say that search marketing could be leveraged to build brands. Search marketing is not a vehicle for branding; banner ads can do that, he said. Search marketing is more about immediate return on investment

Top Indian Search Buyers aiming at an Indian audience (by estimated spend) Advertiser Est. annualised spend Naukri + 99acres + Jeevansathi INR 97,506,504 eBay* INR 92,726,532 Monster + JobsAhead INR 64,736,496 Google** INR 58,402,620 Yahoo INR 32,077,782

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There are three types of spending on search: 1. Indian companies spending in India 2. Overseas companies spending in India 3. Indian companies spending overseas. India's first local internet search engine launched. Guruji.com, founded by two Delhi IIT graduates, today launched country's first local internet search engine, with a commitment of USD seven million from a leading Indian venture capital firm. Aimed at the Indian web consumer, Guruji.com is focused on providing better search results by leveraging proprietary algorithms and data in the Indian context, its Co-Founder and CEO Anurag Dod told reporters here. Crawl technology used by Guruji.com is a complex computing system that crawls the web identifying Indian content using sophisticated algorithms.

Ethical considerations
Many forms of search engine optimization only amount to ensuring compliance to search engines' guidelines for inclusion and removing any technical barriers that might keep the website from reaching a proper ranking. However, other methods of search engine optimization such as keyword spamming are often viewed as "gaming the system" and considered unethical. See the article on search engine optimization for details. Displaying advertisements or sponsored results in an area visually separated from the algorithmically determined results is generally considered ethical. However, some search engines allow the ranking of a website to be influenced with a payment and provide little or no indication to the end-user that this has happened. Since the search engines give the impression or claim that the rankings reflect the relevance or popularity of the websites, this is often seen unfair or deceptive. Search engine advertising products that don't guarantee a specific ranking or an amount of visibility are seen as unethical by some search engine marketers. The product might provide an unspecified "boost" or the final ranking or visibility might be a result of an auction. Paid inclusion has not caused much concern. However, it has been suggested that search engines should improve the speed they pick up new websites and that paid inclusion services thus create a conflict of interest that discourages improving service levels across the board.

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Search engine marketing and customer loyalty

Most knowledgeable eMarketers involved with Internet Marketing believe Search Engine Marketing is the most effective and the most valued way to market your Website. Search Engine Marketing is not just search engine optimization. Search Engine Marketing is the combination of the Right Content, Search Engine Optimization and the Link Popularity concept. For an effective Internet Marketing not only your site has to be optimized with the right content, it also has to be effectively linked with other websites in your field. Search Engine Marketing is Internet Marketing because it's a challenge to be found in search engines these days. The challenge is to be optimized and to have good content that can be recognized by major search engines such as Yahoo and Google. In today's Internet Marketing, Branding and eMarketing are really equal to Search Engine Marketing. Soon Spam will be eliminated and Marketers still have to spend that advertising money somewhere. The money will go into Search Engine Marketing or even Pay Per Click Marketing. As the demand for Pay Per Click Marketing increases, the bids will be even higher. Being found on the first page of Google, Yahoo, and other search engines is vital to any Internet Marketing efforts. That is why Branding is Search Engine Marketing.

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85% of all Internet surfers are directed by search engines Search Engines are the super powerful traffic solution on the Internet

Google Inc. is an American multinational software corporation, first incorporated as a privately held corporation in September, 1998, that specializes in search engine, information retrieval technology and online advertising. With a market capitalization of over US$83.09 billion as of June 2006, Google is the largest internet search company in the world, almost twice as large as arch-rival Yahoo! The company employs approximately 6,800 employees and is based in Mountain View, California. Google, owner of the leading online search engine, is devoted to a single-minded mission: transforming the way the world finds and stores information, even if that means sending people somewhere else. Google: - As a Noun and Verb. The name "Google" originated from a misspelling of "googol, which refers to 10100(a 1 followed by one-hundred zeros). Google has become well known for its corporate culture and innovative, clean products, and has a major impact on online culture. The verb "to Google" has come to mean "to perform a Web search", usually with the Google search engine.

Googles beginning
Google began as a research project in January, 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two Ph.D. students at Stanford University. They hypothesized that a search engine that analyzed the relationships between websites would produce better results than existing techniques which essentially ranked results according to how many times the search term appeared on a page.

Acquaintances of Google:
On September 28, 2005, Google announced a long-term research partnership with NASA which would involve Google building a 1-million square foot R&D center at NASAs Ames Research Center.

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Time Warners AOL unit and Google unveiled an expanded partnership on December 21, 2005, including an enhanced global advertising partnership and a $1 Billion investment by Google for a 5% stake in AOL. Additionally, Google has also recently formed a partnership with Sun Microsystems to help share and distribute each others technologies. Google has also recently begun to experiment with other markets, such as radio and print publications. On January 17, 2006, Google announced that it had purchased the radio advertising company dMarc, which provides an automated system that allows companies to advertise on the radio.

Phases of Google
Here are the last 8 years of Google.com:
In 1998, Google was almost cluttered. Back then there was still some emphasis on Stanford Search, showing the roots of where Google comes from. Also, right on the frontpage you could subscribe to the Google Friends newsletter. In 1999, you can see Google realizes its search engine can stand on its own, and focuses on something the competitors at that time were slowly losing: total focus on search, with a completely uncluttered homepage. Google.com would never again have as little links as in 1999. The logo at that time is still a bit ugly and Google still feels the need to explain what it does In 2000, after having survived the Y2K bug (and about to be surviving the dotcom crash), Google localizes with a language box, and also offers jobs and an about page highlighted with blue bullets. In 2000, Google out of Beta now was proud to be named Best Search Engine by Yahoo Internet Life. Google is also pushing its WAP services on the front-page. On a side-note, I can see SM instead of TM next to the logo. In 2001, some days after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, Google offers condolences to the attack victims. Along with the Madrid bombings years later, this would be about the only time Google shows news and support links on the front-page. In 2002, Google changes its mind about where to put additional links (which grow in number), and introduces blue tabs on top of the search box. The index size is now advertised in the footer position, and the three links to the right side of the search box are what were having today (advances search, preferences and language tools). Also in 2002, one of the first (the first?) weblog on Google started, and it soon became highly popular. On this screen from 2003, Google celebrates Valentines Day. Not much else is new on the homepage, but the index size increased a whalopping 1 billion pages. In 2004 (here showing with an Olympics logo), Google got rid of its tabs on top of the search box, making the page simpler again, while taking their company public. They now had a list of links (Web, Images, Groups, News, and Froogle no more Directories), as well as a more link to get to Googles list of services. This approach scales a little better, but still only the most popular Google services (by the traffic they get, from what we know) will ever make it on the select few homepage links. In 2005, Googles index size almost doubled from last year. Google introduces Google Local to the front-page and gets rid of its Business Solutions link at the bottom.

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In 2006 (the year Google somewhat lost their innocence due to search censorship cooperation with the Chinese government), chances are high youre logged into one of the many Google services with your Google Account.

Life of a Google Query

The life span of a Google query normally lasts less than half a second, yet involves a number of different steps that must be completed before results can be delivered to a person seeking information.

3. The search results are returned to the user in a fraction of a second.

1. The web server sends the query to the index servers. The content inside the index servers is similar to the index in the back of a book - it tells which pages contain the words that match the query.

2. The query travels to the doc servers, which actually retrieve the stored documents. Snippets are generated to describe each search result.

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Google Web Search Features:

Book Search Cached Links Calculator Currency Conversion Definitions File Types Froogle Groups I'm Feeling Lucky Images Local Search Movies Music Search News Headlines PhoneBook Q&A Refine Your Search New! Results Prefetching Search By Number Use Google to search the full text of books. View a snapshot of each page as it looked when we indexed it. Use Google to evaluate mathematical expressions. Easily perform any currency conversion. Use Google to get glossary definitions gathered from various online sources. Search for non-HTML file formats including PDF documents and others. To find a product for sale online, use Froogle - Google's product search service. See relevant postings from Google Groups in your regular web search results. Bypass our results and go to the first web page returned for your query. See relevant images in your regular web search results. Search for local businesses and services in the U.S., the U.K., and Canada. Use Google to find reviews and showtimes for movies playing near you. Use Google to get quick access to a wide range of music information. Enhances your search results with the latest related news stories. Look up U.S. street address and phone number information. Use Google to get quick answers to straightforward questions. Add instant info and topic-specific links to your search in order to focus and improve your results. Makes searching in Firefox faster. Use Google to access package tracking information, US patents, and a variety of online databases.

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 Similar Pages Site Search Spell Checker Stock and Fund Quotes Street Maps Travel Information Weather Web Page Translation Who Links To You?

Display pages that are related to a particular result. Restrict your search to a specific site. Offers alternative spelling for queries. Use Google to get up-to-date stock and mutual fund quotes and information. Use Google to find U.S. street maps. Check the status of an airline flight in the U.S. or view airport delays and weather conditions. Check the current weather conditions and forecast for any location in the U.S. Provides you access to web pages in other languages. Find pages that point to a specific URL

What Appears on the Results Page

1) Click on the Google logo to go to Google's home page. 2) Describes your search, includes the number of results on the current results page and an estimate of the total number of results, as well as the time your search took. Every underlined term in the statistics bar is linked to its dictionary definition. 3) Tips: Sometimes Google displays a tip in a box just below the statistics bar. 4) Search Results: Ordered by relevance to your query, with the result that Google considers the most relevant listed first. Consequently you are likely to find what you're seeking quickly by looking at the results in the order in which they appear. Google assesses relevance by considering over a hundred factors, including how many other pages link to the page, the positions of the search terms within the page, and the proximity of the search terms to one another.

Some of search-result components:

Page Title: (blue) The web page's title, if the page has one, or its URL if the page has no title or if Google has not indexed all of the page's content. Click on the page title (e.g., The History of the Brassiere - Mary Phelps Jacob) to display the corresponding page. Snippets: (black) Each search result usually includes one or more short excerpts of the text that matches your query with your search terms in boldface type. Each distinct excerpt or snippet is separated by an ellipsis (...). These snippets, which appear in a black font, may provide you with The information you are seeking What you might find on the linked page Ideas of terms to use in your subsequent searches

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URL of Result: (green) Web address of the search result. In the screen shot, the URL of the first result is inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa042597.htm. Size: (green) The size of the text portion of the web page. In the screen shot, "5k" means that the text portion of the web page is 5 kilobytes. One kilobyte is 1,024 (210) bytes. One byte typically holds one character. In general, the average size of a word is six characters. So each 1k of text is about 170 words. A page containing 5K characters thus is about 850 words long. Date: (green) Sometimes the date Google crawled a page appears just after the size of the page. The date tells you the freshness of Google's copy of the page. Dates are included for pages that have recently had a fresh crawl. Indented Result: When Google finds multiple results from the same website, it lists the most relevant result first with the second most relevant page from that same site indented below it. In the screen shot, the indented result and the one above it are both from the site inventors.about.com. More Results: When there are more than two results from the same site, access the remaining results from the "More results from..." link. When Google returns more than one page of results, you can view subsequent pages by clicking either a page number or one of the "o"s in the whimsical "Gooooogle" that appears below the last search result on the page.

5) Sponsored Links: Your results may include some clearly identified sponsored links (advertisements) relevant to your search. If any of your search terms appear in the ads, Google displays them in boldface type. 6) Spelling Corrections, Dictionary Definition, Cached, Similar Pages, News, Product Information, Translation, Book results: Here's another screen shot of the results page in case the one at the top of this page scrolled off your screen.

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7) Google Identifies Ads and Sponsored Links: It doesn't sell placement of search results. Sponsored links and ads are clearly marked and kept separate from search results. Ads relate to content and aren't distracting. 8) Google's Approach to Ads: Google's approach to ads is similar to its approach to search results: the ads must deliver useful links, or the ads are removed. 9) Ads must be relevant to your search. Ads must not intrude, distract, or annoy (no popup or flashy ads). Sponsored links are clearly identified and kept separate from search results. 10) Google is Fast: Most results are found in less than a second. You can also access Google's cached version of a web page, often faster than the page itself. 11) Google is Simple to Use: Clear uncluttered simple web pages. 12) Google Shows What You Get: Search results include an excerpt (or "snippet") of the text that matches your query with your search terms in boldface. 13) Google Packs Results with Information and with Links Related to your Query : Shows a Page Even When it's Gone or its Link is Inaccessible: Google takes a snapshot of each page it examines and caches (stores) these as a backup. If the original isn't available, you can access Google's cached version. 14) Google Continually Improves its Search Results: Its capabilities are enhanced and expanded to match the dynamic growth and changing nature of the web. 15) Google's Mission and Philosophy: Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Google Branding Strategy

Google released an eye-opening statistic that nearly 50% of all searches have never been carried out before.

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Google's has automated measurement of landing page quality. Google spiders the page you intend to send users to and gives a preference to actual fully-built sites with good PR instead of single-orphan-page landing sites with just a form. So if your landing page is more useful to the user, you get a preference over a blank page with a form that your rival has. Google likes: 1 link from domain A, 1 link from domain B, 1 link from domain C, 1 link from domain D... Google doesn't really like: 150 links from domain A, 10000 links from domain B...Google works by anchor text + link per domain. There is the incumbent advantage if you've historically been performing at a particular position, then Google gives you an advantage over a Johnny-come-lately who has to outspend you on the same keywords to even come up to the levels you are at. The dont be evil Google enjoys an immaculate branding strategy which has proven to be one of the most brilliant and effective branding strategies ever witnessed. Google has an unsullied image that sparkles cleaner than Coca Cola, Pepsi, Ford, Gap and AT&T combined. Just a few months back, Google beat out Starbucks, Apple Computer, and Coca Cola to claim BrandChannel.com's Brand of the Year title. Integrity Google's complex, automated methods make human tampering with our results extremely difficult. And though we do run relevant ads above and next to our results, Google does not sell placement within the results themselves (i.e., no one can buy a higher PageRank). A Google search was an easy, honest and objective way to find high-quality websites with information relevant to your search. It's simply the "I'm your friend" branding strategy on a huge scale. Go to any South Florida retirement community, and you'll most likely find a dozen or so exconvicts using the "I'm your friend" approach to con elderly folks out of their life savings. This is one reason most big businesses avoids using this branding strategy because it is an integral part of every confidence scheme. Google's ranking formula looks something like this: CPC (cost per click) x CTR (click-through rate) = Ranking Google has recently made some pretty significant changes in its ranking algorithm. The latest update, dubbed by Google forum users as "Allegra", has left some web sites in the dust and catapulted others to top positions Liabilities The major drawback in this strategy is its limited demographic appeal, and its potential for backlash. Co-Branding Google & Democracy Compaq builds credibility with consumers by co-branding products with the Intel and Microsoft logo. Google set its sights a bit higher, and has successfully cobranded the Google brand with the ideal of democracy itself.

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When Google hasn't crawled a page, it doesn't include a snippet. A page might not be crawled because its publisher requested no crawling, or because the page was written in such a way that it was too difficult to crawl. The ads must deliver useful links, or the ads are removed. Sponsored links and ads are clearly marked and kept separate from search results. Ads relate to content and aren't distracting. Google brought a new concept to evaluating web pages. This concept, called PageRank, has been important to the Google algorithm from the start. PageRank is an algorithm that weights a page's importance based upon the quantity and quality of incoming links. PageRank estimates the likelihood that a given page will be reached by a web user who randomly surfs the web, and follows links from one page to anotherGoogle has often manually adjusted the PageRank of sites, pages and entire IP ranges. When Google needs to, it lowers the PageRank of competitors. The Google Website Optimizer allows its users to run experiments on landing page content, including headlines, promotional copy, and images. The interface allows users to quickly and easily test different versions of each page. A/B split testing is frequently recommended by conversion experts.Using the Google Analytics technology, this new service will help advertisers find out which one will drive the most conversions whether they are defined as sales, sign-ups or download.

What made Google Better?

When critics do question the moral superiority of Google, the Google groupies rush to defend their icon of all that is pure and good, saying "Google is completely objective" and "Google is a shining star," and quoting the Google doctrine, "PageRank - and Google - is the democracy of the web." Google Searches More Than 9 Billion URLs: Google crawls and indexes many web pages, thus increasing the likelihood of its returning what you're seeking. Google Returns Relevant Results: It tends to be good at selecting links that closely match your search query. What you want is usually near the top. Google is thorough and fast. Its technology considers pages that are linked from many other sites to be more important than pages that only have a few links from other sites. if many webmasters consider a website valuable enough to create a link to it, Google considers that a good reason to justify a high ranking for that site. Google is totally search engine.

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Google begins radio ad trials: Google has continued its push into traditional media with a beta launch of its radio advertising system in the US. The search giant said it had begun testing the Audio Ads service with 20 AdWords customers and over 700 radio stations, having reworked the technology of dMarc Broadcasting, the radio advertising company it bought almost a year ago Add your URL to Google: add and update new sites to index each time google crawl the web, and it invites you to submit your URL. They do not add all submitted URLs to our index, and we cannot make any predictions or guarantees about when or if they will appear. The position of your search terms is treated with respect You see what you're getting before you click.: Instead of web page summaries that never change, Google shows an excerpt (or "snippet") of the text that matches your query -- with your search terms in boldface -- right in the search results. This sneak preview gives you a good idea if a page is going to be relevant before you visit it. As Google crawls the web, it takes a snapshot of each page and analyzes it to determine the page's relevance. You can access these cached pages if the original page is temporarily unavailable due to Internet congestion or server problems. With AdWords, you can target your ads to appear only in specific geographic locations. When you target regional and local areas, you can reach the prospects who are most appropriate for your business and you can write ads that highlight special promotions or pricing based on geography Simply describe your items on GoogleBase to make them as easy as possible for people to find when they search. You don't even need a website to put your stuff online Connect your employees, partners and customers with the information they need on your website and intranet. The Google Mini and Google Search Appliance delivers fast, relevant search results across your company's documents and websites. With Google Wireless WebSearch, your users can search not just the Mobile Web but the entire web. No other search engine can provide this service. Google's emphasis on innovation and commitment to cost containment means each employee is a hands-on contributor. Google's hiring policy is aggressively non-discriminatory and favors ability over experience. The result is a staff that reflects the global audience the search engine serves. A single search reveals four elements that separate Google from its competition: speed, accuracy, objectivity and ease of use. Google does not allow pop-up ads of any kind on the site. SafeSearch filtering: Google's SafeSearch screens for sites that contain explicit sexual content and deletes them from your search results. Moderate filtering excludes most explicit images from Google Image Search results but doesnt filter ordinary web search results. This is your default SafeSearch setting; youll receive moderate filtering unless you change it. Strict filtering applies SafeSearch filtering to all your search results (i.e., both image search and ordinary web search) 69

No Filtering, as youve probably figured out, turns off SafeSearch filtering completely. Language options Number of results: if you want to see more results per page, you can increase the number to 20, 30, 50 or 100. Public Service Search offers educational institutions and non-profit organizations worldwide free SiteSearch. Google's University Search: Google's University Search enables you to narrow your search to a specific school website. Try it for things like admissions information, course schedules, or alumni news. Google supports frames to the extent that it can. If Google determines that a user's query matches the page as a whole, it will return the entire frame set. However, if the user's query matches an individual frame within the larger frame set, Google returns only the relevant frame. In this case, the entire frame set of the page will not appear. The Google Directory is built on work done by the Open Directory Project, a network of thousands of volunteers managed by Netscape. We're not able to edit the content of the categories in any way, nor can we check the status of submissions and changes Webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of highquality sites that link to their pages. Blocking Googlebot : Google uses several user-agents. You can block access to any of them by including the bot name on the User-Agent line of an entry. Blocking Googlebot blocks all bots that begin with "Googlebot". Googlebot: crawl pages from our web index and our news index Googlebot-Mobile: crawls pages for our mobile index Googlebot-Image: crawls pages for our image index Mediapartners-Google: crawls pages to determine AdSense content. We only use this bot to crawl your site if you show AdSense ads on your site. Adsbot-Google: crawls pages to measure AdWords landing page quality Google mobile offers Google Web Search and Image Search configured for mobile devices. By adding Google Search to your mobile website, you can enable mobile users to find whatever they're looking for. Google uses the verification process to keep unauthorized users from seeing detailed statistics about your site Site verification is a process that Google uses to ensure that only site owners can see detailed diagnostics, statistics and other information. Google may temporarily or permanently remove sites from its index and search results if it believes it is obligated to do so by law, if the sites do not meet The Google Search Appliance makes the sea of lost and misplaced data on your web servers, file servers, content management systems, relational databases and business applications instantly available from a single familiar search box. Through an interface as simple and intuitive as Google.com, your employees will have instant,

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real-time secure access to all the information and knowledge across your entire enterprise in more than 220 different file formats, and in over 109 different languages. Google's webmaster tools provide you with a free and easy way to make your site more Google-friendly. Using our tools, you can: Get Google's view of your website, and diagnose potential problems. See how Google crawls and indexes your site and learn about specific problems we're having accessing it. See how your site is performing. Learn which queries drive traffic to your site, and see exactly how users arrive there To add site to Google's search results: Inclusion in Google's search results is free and easy; you don't even need to submit your site to Google. Google is a fully automated search engine that uses software known as "spiders" to crawl the web on a regular basis and find sites to add to our index. Although Google crawls billions of pages, it's inevitable that some sites will be missed. When our spiders miss a site, it's frequently for one of the following reasons: The site isn't well connected through multiple links to other sites on the web. The site launched after Google's most recent crawl was completed. The design of the site makes it difficult for Google to effectively crawl its content. The site was temporarily unavailable when we tried to crawl it or we received an error when Google tried to crawl it. Technology : PageRank Technology: PageRank performs an objective measurement of the importance of web pages by solving an equation of more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Instead of counting direct links, PageRank interprets a link from Page A to Page B as a vote for Page B by Page A. PageRank then assesses a page's importance by the number of votes it receives. PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. Important pages receive a higher PageRank and appear at the top of the search results. Google's technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page's importance. There is no human involvement or manipulation of results, which is why users have come to trust Google as a source of objective information untainted by paid placement. Hypertext-Matching Analysis: Google's search engine also analyzes page content. However, instead of simply scanning for page-based text (which can be manipulated by site publishers through meta-tags), Google's technology analyzes the full content of a page and factors in fonts, subdivisions and the precise location of each word. Google also analyzes the content of neighboring web pages to ensure the results returned are the most relevant to a user's query.

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Google's innovations don't stop at the desktop. To bring its accurate and speedy search results to users accessing the web through portable devices, Google also pioneered the first wireless search technology for on-the-fly translation of HTML to formats optimized for WAP, i-mode, J-SKY, and EZWeb. Currently, Google provides its wireless technology to numerous market leaders, including AT&T Wireless, Sprint PCS, Nextel, Palm, Handspring, and Vodafone, among others. The algorithm is based on two systems: a precise analysis of the contents of the indexed pages (keywords, occurrences, positions in the document, type of HTML tag, etc.) a classification of the pages according to their popularity (PageRank), calculated from the topology of the Web (i.e. the whole structure of the documents and the links between them). Recently with Google Maps/Earth they are becoming established as the company that best helps you find where. What if Google is now working on becoming the company that best helps you find who? Google Dance : Every approximately 4 weeks, in addition to the updates processed by Google's crawlers to index the content of a billion Web pages, Google updates the computation of the Page Rank of each indexed page.This period of update ( Google Dance ) lasts several days Google developed a small program called Google Toolbar, which adds a toolbar to Internet Explorer. You can type in your keywords directly inside and obtain the results in the navigator as if you had gone on the homepage of Google to make your search. The PageRank is schematized by a horizontal green bar, more or less wide. By pointing the mouse above, you obtain a number between 0 and 10. This number is only one rough approximation of the actual value of PageRank, which is a number much more precise (either a big integer number, or a number with decimals).
Example of PageRank of 6/10

Beside the PageRank is displayed a geen icon indicating the category in which the site is listed in the Google Directory. In certain cases some pages may have a category different from the site's one. This directory is a free modified version of the DMOZ directory where Google sorts site according to their PageRank. A click on the icon makes it possible to go directly in this category and to consult other sites treating of the same subject, classified by PageRank. A click on one of the other tools proposed by the Google toolbar gives you one of following information:

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the cache page (last copy of the page indexed by Google) the pages similar to the current page (related: command in Google) the pages linking to (backward links of) the current URL ( link: command in Google) the automatic translation of the page

Google's Business Model

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Google is clearly focused on delivering contextual based advertising through the AdWords program. This model has expanded in the past year to cover images and larger ads, including what were once described as banner ads. While they continue to support algorithmic search and continue to offer free-placement (or organic) listings, the real revenue generator is paid-search traffic through AdWords"

Google's Revenue Model

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Google offers targeted advertising solutions and global Internet search solutions. Its principal products and services include:

Google Ad Words for Advertisers: Google offers a highly effective advertising

programme that is widely recognized as one of the Web's most efficient advertising vehicles. Pricing Auction based pricing based on the value (cost-per-click or CPC) an advertiser assigns to particular keywords. An ad's position on the page is determined by a combination of the CPC and the clickthrough rate (number of times the ad is clicked on by users) so that the most relevant ads are displayed more prominently. The cost of creating an account is $5 and there is no minimum ad spend required. Technology Prices for some clicks are adjusted based on their expected value to help ensure better performance for advertisers and an automated discounter keeps the cost of each click at the lowest amount possible in order to hold its position above a competitor's ad. ad targeting by location, and numerous tools for optimizing accounts, including a keyword suggestion tool and daily budget management. Format Messages appear adjacent to web search results on Google.com and partner sites. Labeled as "sponsored links. May appear on targeted content pages across the web. Targeting Based on advertiser selected keywords or sophisticated content analysis algorithms, so ads always appear in context with other information on the page. Support Two options: Advertisers sign up online and manage their own accounts, which are activated with a credit card. For our larger advertisers, our full service account team sets up accounts, designs campaigns based on the advertiser's defined metrics and then monitors creative and click-through rates to continuously optimize those campaigns. Customers Recent advertisers include: Sony, Cisco, Alamo Car Rental, Ameritrade, Amazon.com, Canon, Disney, General Motors, L.L. Bean, Nordstrom, Sears, Smith & Hawken, Sprint, Volvo and Xerox.

Google Ad Sense: serves relevant ads on search result and content pages.
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Technology Innovations include the ability to target relevant advertising based on keywords provided by a searcher or to dynamically analyze content and select relevant ads to display on a page. Support Two options: Publishers can manage their own accounts, which are activated through an online application process and implemented by simply cutting and pasting some HTML onto their web pages. A dedicated sales team customizes programs for sites receiving more than 20 million page views per month. Customers USATODAY.com, ABC.com, Forbes.com and 60% of the comScore Media Metrix top 100 sites, as well as thousands of other specialty content sites.

Google Search Services enable publishers to provide Google web and site search on
their own pages results that can be used to generate revenue with the AdSense for Search program. Technology Google search is based on a continuously evolving set of technologies that offer innovations in every aspect of information retrieval and provide users with the most relevant results. Support Hosted by Google, with results customized to customer's specifications. Results available via HTTP and can be formatted in XML or Google's proprietary protocol. Updates Conducted on a regular basis to ensure fresh content. Reporting Reports on daily number of traffic, top queries, top keywords searched, and other information. Indexing Billions of pages, the largest index on the web. Features Searches can be narrowed to a specific domain/subdomain or a specific language. Google also supports OR operators, keyword exclusion and phrase searching if quotation marks are used. Customers Washingtonpost.com, AOL/Netscape, Palm, Fujitsu NIFTY (Japan), NEC BIGLOBE (Japan), NetEase (China),Yam.com (Taiwan), Vodafone Global Platform and Internet Services Group (U.K.), Retivision (Spain), Sapo (Portugal), and Virgilio (Italy).

The Google Search Appliance is a scalable and secure device that provides Google
quality search across an individual website or intranet. 76

 Technology Google search is based on a continuously evolving set of technologies that offer innovations in every aspect of information retrieval and provide users with the most relevant results. Delivery Hosted at the customer's location on the Google Search Appliance, with results customized to customer's specifications. Three models offer search across any size collection up to 15 million documents. Updates Crawls available on a schedule set by the customer. Password protected or secure pages can be indexed in most cases. Google's caching technology makes it possible for users to access pages even if the hosting server is busy or down. Reporting Reports on daily number of traffic, top queries, top keywords searched, and other information. Indexing Customers can elect to offer different segments of their index to different users (e.g., by language, country, etc.) Features Searches can be narrowed to a specific domain/subdomain or a specific language. International language support enables search over documents in the following languages: Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Google also supports OR operators, keyword exclusion and phrase searching if quotation marks are used. Support 24/7 technical support Customers PBS, The World Bank, Procter & Gamble, Cisco Systems, Boeing, Stanford University , Nextel and Kaiser Permanente

Google Wireless Services deliver Google search results via PDAs, wireless phones and
other mobile devices powered by many of the world's leading wireless service providers. Technology Google's proprietary on-the-fly conversion system translates web pages into a language understood by handheld devices, so users can access the world's largest index of web pages. Google Wireless Search supports WML, HDML, HTML, and i-mode and J-Sky compatible HTML mobile internet standards. Hosted by Google, with results customized to customer's specifications. Results available via HTTP and can be formatted in XML or Google's proprietary protocol. Crawls available daily or weekly. Password protected or secure pages can be indexed in most cases. Google's cache makes it possible for users to access pages even if the hosting server is busy or down.

Delivery

8 Updates

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 Reporting

Reports on daily number of traffic, top queries, top keywords searched, and other information. Revenue Opportunities Targeted keyword advertising that can be sold by customer. Indexing Billions of pages, the largest index on the web. Customers can elect to offer different segments of their index to different users (e.g., by language, country, etc.) Support 24/7 technical support. Customers Sprint, Cingular, Qwest, Nextel, Bell Mobility (Canada), Vizzavi, Sprint PCS, Nextel, Palm, Handspring and Omnisky.

In year 2005, Google launched the Google Publication Ads Program through which they distribute their advertisers ads for publication in magazines. Google recognize as revenue the fees charged advertisers when their ads are published in magazines. Pay per Click Advertising: Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is the best way to send immediate, targeted traffic to your website. It is an online advertising payment model in which payment is based on qualifying click-throughs. An advertiser has to pay every time his ad receives a click. The Advertisers decide the keywords relevant to their offer that should display their ad and the maximum amount they are willing to pay per click for that keyword. Revenues Google reported revenues of $2.25 billion for the quarter ended March 31, 2006, representing a 79% increase over first quarter 2005 revenues of $1.26 billion, and a 17% increase over fourth quarter 2005 revenues of $1.92 billion. Google Sites Revenues - Google-owned sites generated revenues of $1.30 billion, or 58% of total revenues. This represents a 97% increase over first quarter 2005 revenues of $657 million and an 18% increase over fourth quarter 2005 revenues of $1.10 billion. Google Network Revenues - Googles partner sites generated revenues, through AdSense programs, of $928 million, or 41% of total revenues. This is a 59% increase over network revenues of $584 million generated in the first quarter of 2005 International Revenues- The growth in international revenues have grown as a percentage of our total revenues to 42% in the three months ended March 31, 2006 from 38% in the three months ended December 31, 2005 and from 39% in the three months ended March 31, 2005. Organic listings on the other hand are getting all the more irrelevant. After the completion of Big Daddy Update, Google may actually prefer a few irrelevant results in the organic listings for commercial terms. The irrelevance is good for the paid listings that will add to the Googles revenues because poor organic results mean higher CTRs on their paid links and more juice for their quarterly earnings. selling search tools to corporate customers Google discovered there's a third great source of revenue in today's wildly inflated and delusional stock market: IPOs. I'm convinced that, more than anything else, 78

Google went public because it gave them a ton of cash to do even more things for free for their customers -- which is exactly what they've done since then, offering a never-ending stream of wonderful goodies Earnings since Inception Googles revenues showed a significant growth from 2004 and 2005 resulted primarily from growth in advertising revenues from ads on Google Network members web sites and growth in revenues from ads on Google web sites. This increase resulted primarily from increases in the number of paid clicks rather than from changes in the fees charged. The increase in the number of paid clicks was due to an increase in the number of Google Network members and aggregate traffic at their web sites and on Googles web sites. Annual Income Statement (Values in Millions) Sales Cost of Sales Gross Operating Profit Selling, General & Admin. Expense Other Taxes EBITDA Depreciation & Amortization EBIT Other Income, Net Total Income Avail for Interest Exp. Interest Expense Minority Interest Pre-tax Income Income Taxes Special Income/Charges Net Income from Cont. Operations Net Income from Discont. Opers. Net Income from Total Operations

12/2005 12/2004 12/2003 12/2002 12/2001 6,138.6 3,189.2 1,465.9 439.5 2,277.7 1,309.2 570.8 3,860.9 1,880.0 895.1 1,459.8 890.3 0.0 293.8 124.4 0.0 0.0 676.3 -90.0 0.0 148.5 10.0 0.0 0.0 251.1 -201.0 2,401.1 989.7 2,107.3 841.2 2,141.7 650.2 497.6 0.0 397.5 55.0 342.5 4.2 346.7 0.0 0.0 346.7 241.0 0.0 105.6 0.0 105.6 102.5 337.0 121.5 0.0 215.5 29.0 186.5 0.0 186.5 1.6 0.0 184.9 85.3 0.0 99.7 0.0 99.7 86.4 NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA 7.0 0.0 7.0

2,141.7 650.2

1,465.4 399.1 0.0 0.0 1,465.4 399.1

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Normalized Income Extraordinary Income Income from Cum. Eff. of Acct. Chg. Income from Tax Loss Carryforward Other Gains (Losses) Total Net Income

1,555.4 600.1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

105.6 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 105.6

99.7 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 99.7

NA 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 7.0

1,465.4 399.1

Growth in advertising revenues from Google Network members web sites from: March 31, 2004 June 30, 2004 June 30, 2005 September 30, 2005 June 30, 2004 September 30, 2004 September 30, 2005 December 31, 2005 $12.5 million $38.1 million $44.8 million $123.6 million

Growth in advertising revenues from Google web sites from: March 31, 2004 June 30, 2004 June 30, 2005 September 30, 2005 June 30, 2004 September 30, 2004 September 30, 2005 December 31, 2005 $39.9 million $68.3 million $147.5 million $213.5 million

Google helps building customer loyalty

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A recent study by Brand Keys revealed the obvious: Google is #1 of all Internet brands for brand loyalty. If you've ever been online, the irrational and almost fanatic brand loyalty of Google fans is hard to miss. Google's utility and ease of use have made it one of the world's best known brands almost entirely through word of mouth from satisfied users. The PageRank algorithm proved very effective, and Google began to be perceived as serving the most relevant search results. On the back of strong word of mouth from programmers, Google became a popular search engine. The presentation of Google as a noble and altruistic organization, whose only concern is the honesty and integrity of the World Wide Web, is not a two-cent branding technique. By branding itself as the morally superior search engine, they have safeguarded themselves against a quick demise. Focus on the user :Google has focused on providing the best user experience possible. While many companies claim to put their customers first, few are able to resist the temptation to make small sacrifices to increase shareholder value. Google has steadfastly refused to make any change that does not offer a benefit to the users who come to the site: o The interface is clear and simple. o Pages load instantly. o Placement in search results is never sold to anyone. o Advertising on the site must offer relevant content and not be a distraction.

Google search inside your company: Increases the time users spend on your website - Knowledge workers spend up to 25% of their day looking for information.1 Good search helps them find it (and then use it) more quickly. Acts as a gateway - With Google OneBox for Enterprise, employees can easily access many different corporate information sources with a simple search query. Reduces redundant work and duplication of effort - Good search helps employees build on work done by others, instead of starting projects from scratch. Encourages collaboration - Employees frequently find themselves working on projects similar to those going on elsewhere in an organization. Good search puts people in touch. Unifies search - Employees can easily search the corporate network, their desktop and the Internet from one search box with Google Desktop for Enterprise combined with the Google Search Appliance or Google Mini Eliminates manual document categorization - Building out complex navigation structures or trying to manually add metadata to documents is time-consuming and unnecessary with the Google Search Appliance. Grows with your information - The volume of information in your company is growing, and Googles scalable search solutions can easily accommodate this growth

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Google Search on public websites: Delivers user to relevant content - Regardless of the purpose of your website, search is the key to help all your visitors find the information they seek, quickly and easily. Exceeds user expectations - Visitors expect your sites search to work as well as Google.com, so its only by providing Google-quality search that you can be sure to meet their high expectations. Increases customer satisfaction - Search is the gateway to self-service support online. When customers find answers to their support-related questions, not only will they be happy but they wont pick up the phone to call you. Boosts sales - Visitors using site search know what they are looking for, and are more than twice as likely to convert to buyers

Google in India
Google Inc. today marked its continued investment in India with the opening of its business operations in Delhi and Mumbai. These operations complement existing centres in Bangalore and Hyderabad, and are designed to enable Google to develop business opportunities, provide locally relevant products and services, and deliver advertising services to its users, advertisers and partners throughout India. The Google India team will forge relationships with businesses, partners and agencies throughout the region and enable them to take advantage of this growth in e-commerce. Google through its advertising programme Google AdWords enables advertisers and businesses of all sizes and industries to reach this fast growing audience as they search the web. Google Indias sales and operations are led by Ashish Kashyap. Kashyap has extensive experience in these markets and was formerly General Manager & Business Head of ECommerce at Indiatimes.com. We see an opportunity in India for Google to partner with businesses through Google AdWords to make an impact on their growth, said Kashyap. As country manager of Google Indias sales and operations, Kashyap and his team will focus on continuing to grow Google's client base and business relationships. Google's advertisers in India currently include Citibank, Monster India, Bharatmatrimony.com, MakeMyTrip, SpiceJet, Kingfisher Airlines, ICICI Bank, Shaadi.com, Ebay India, and Birla Sunlife. "The Google Code Jam is an incredible opportunity for the most talented and fastest computer scientists in the world to come together and compete on an international stage," said Alan Eustace, Senior Vice President, Engineering. "Google is proud to support these amazing coders as they take on some of the world's most challenging programming problems, and we're pleased to have the chance to introduce them to our research and development offices around the world." In addition to the trip to Google's New York Engineering Office, finalists will also divide $155,000 in prize money:

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How Search Engine Users are Cheated?

Undoubtedly Google is the world's most popular search engine. But recently the King of search engine world is going through a bad phase due to its recent Big Daddy Update. However, the dissatisfaction with Google is increasing rapidly because of its reluctance to index and catalogue new websites. Newly launched websites are being indexed by Google's robots as normal but the information that they obtain is not being converted into actual page listings for time periods that exceed, in some cases, nine months. As with all things Google related, the exact nature of any filters or algorithmic changes remains purely conjecture as Google never reveals anything about its inner workings. With the increase in trust, development of brand and improved market share, Google started smelling the "revenue flesh". There has been a tremendous increase in revenue of Google in a year or so. The reason behind this may be attributed to the shift in Google's focus that is towards advertising and paid listings. The recognition of Google as a major brand was followed by the increase in revenue and the market share. This resulted in Google focusing more on advertising and sources to generate revenue. The recent launch of IPO by Google makes it mandatory for the major player to focus on generating more revenue to book more profit and in the process keep the investors the share market interested in its offerings. In the current Google's primary interested is in generating revenue, shifting from its claim of being the search engine that provided relevant results. Undoubtedly Google is on the way to becoming a paid search engine " The prime source of revenue for Google is AdWords and it seeks advertisers to buy space on major keywords. There are manipulations or spam on major keywords which attract high bids." Google does not want sites on major keywords to appear on top of search results provoking a user to click on the sponsored results. " Google in trying to force the site owners to switch towards sponsored listing if they want to survive. The bottom line is that users are dissatisfied with Google because of its lack of relevancy and quality. Google is definitely losing trust among surfers and the online business community.

Problems with Google

E-consultancy spotted a big problem with our Google Ad words ads, after noticing that Google is ignoring their choice of landing page. Instead, it redirects people to their websites homepage. E-consultancy uses in-link URLs for tracking purposes, so they can measure response from different paid search campaigns / ads. This is common practice among internet marketers, or for anybody who wants to shorten a long URL. In Adwords, Google automatically appends our URL with its own tracking code, so it too can measure response, determine ad position, and of course charge us every time somebody clicks.

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But we just figured out that Googles tracking code breaks our in-link redirect. Instead of seeing the appropriate landing page, people are unceremoniously dumped on the homepage. This cant be too good for our Quality Score, and certainly it has impacted badly on conversion rates, return on investment and ad positions.

RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS

Objective of study:

The objective of the research is to analyze the attitude of consumers with respect to Emarketing and with special reference to search engines. It basically studies what prompts the consumers to click on the search engine, is it the online research, purchasing a product online or the online community. Our research would aim at determining the attitude of the internet user towards search engines by questions like: How many entries do they review before clicking one? How often do you visit a search engine? What prompts you to click on the search engine? If you dont find what you are looking for at what point do you move either to another search engine?

It also aims to study the consumers mind by asking them to recall the search engines they can think of and thus enlisting them and also whether seeing a company listed among the top
results on a search engine makes the users thinks that the company is a top one within its field.

The research also aims to study whether the users click more on the sponsored links or follow the natural search way.

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RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Introduction
Our research methodology establishes a framework of evaluation and revaluation of primary and secondary research.

Research Design
We first conducted an intensive secondary research to understand the full impact and implication of the industry, reviewed the industry norms and reports on which certain issues shall be selected which we felt remain unanswered or liable to change. This was taken up in the next stage of the exploratory research where focus group screened through the process. This stage helped us to restrict and select only the important questions and issues which inhabit growth and segmentation in the industry. The following set of questions was then proposed to be studied under descriptive research which finally helped in the formation of hypothesis and testing under causal research.

Primary Data Research

New data gathered to help solve the problem at hand. Primary data is basically collected by getting the questionnaire filled by the respondents. Expert opinion, Focus Group interview.

Secondary Data Research

Information that already exists somewhere, having been collected for another purpose. Sources include census reports, trade publications, and subscription services. Data that have already been collected and published for another research project (other than the one at hand).

Types of Research Design

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Exploratory Research
As the term suggests, exploratory research is often conducted because a problem has not been clearly defined as yet, or its real scope is as yet unclear. It allows the researcher to familiarize him/herself with the problem or concept to be studied, and perhaps generate hypotheses (definition of hypothesis) to be tested. It is the initial research, before more conclusive research is undertaken. Exploratory research helps determine the best research design, data collection method and selection of subjects. Another common reason for conducting exploratory research is to test concepts before they are put in the marketplace, always a very costly Endeavour. In concept testing, consumers are provided either with a written concept or a prototype for a new, revised or repositioned product, service or strategy. Exploratory research can be quite informal, relying on secondary research such as reviewing available literature and/or data, or qualitative approaches such as informal discussions with consumers, employees, management or competitors, and more formal approaches through in-depth interviews, focus groups, projective methods, case studies or pilot studies. How EXPLORATORY RESEARCH DESIGN has been used in the project: Exploratory research was used in the project when we started with the collection of information by surfing the websites for research papers. We did secondary data analysis by collecting data from internet and articles from magazines.

Descriptive Research
Descriptive research or statistical research provides data about the population or universe being studied. But it can only describe the "who, what, when, where and how" of a situation, not what caused it. Therefore, descriptive research is used when the objective is to provide a systematic description that is as factual and accurate as possible. It provides the number of times something occurs, or frequency, lends itself to statistical calculations such as determining the average number of occurrences or central tendencies. The two most commonly types of descriptive research designs are: 1. Observation and 2. Surveys How DESCRIPTIVE RESEARCH DESIGN has been used in the project: In descriptive research we will undertake cross-sectional study by surveys from a sample of population, who use internet and notice ads online. That will include focus groups, interviews and survey as it aims to explain the behavior of the user. After gathering the

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secondary information we then conducted a focus group interview of a sample size of 20 people.This stage helped to restrict and select only the important questions and issues which inhabit growth and segmentation in the industry. We used the following questionnaire to select only the important issues and arrive at the variables which we will study in our research.

VARIABLES THAT HAVE BEEN STUDIED

The various variables that we have identified during our research are: Age The age group of the consumers who use internet is very important as it helps us to know that what age groups of people visit the search engines and how do they use it. Gender It is important to know whether the people who use the search engines are males or females. As males have different attitude than females, hence, we deem it as an important variable for our study. City It is deemed to be an important variable to know that which part of the country is using maximum search engines and that to for what purpose. Education Reactions vary with the education. A post-graduate person seems to have different attitude towards search engines than a graduate and an under graduate .It is this behavior which we can capture by using education as one of the variables. Occupation Numbers of people who use search engines vary with the kind of occupation one is in. Therefore, by knowing the occupation of people, we can focus our future endeavors for the same. Foe e.g.: If a person is a student or is in advertising or an IT professional, he will have different attitudes towards search engines marketing. Hence, occupation will help us determine the consumer behaviors. E-marketing tools

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This will help us identify that what tools of e-marketing are being preferred by internet users and so will be helpful for advertisers to promote their products with that type of marketing tool.

Use Search engine This will help us identify as to whether people use search engines and if yes then for what purpose do they use, so it will help the marketer know the percentage of people who visit search engines. How use search engine This variable will help the marketer to identify with how do the users use search engines. Do they use the same search engine or use different search engines for different purposes. Visit search engine It will help us identify the reason as to why the users visit the search engine, they use it for purchasing the product online or just for doing online research. It will give us an insight into the consumers mind. Entry review It will give us an insight into the users usage pattern of the search engines whether they review few entries before clicking on one or they review the first page or the first two pages and so on. Often visit This gives an insight into the frequency of the usage of the search engine, whether they visit once a week or more than that. Click prompt It gives the marketer an idea as to what the consumers prefer in a search engine. Do they lay stress on quality or the speed or accurate results. It will help the search engines to modify their engines accordingly. List search engine This will give us an insight into what type of search engines do consumers prefer and which are the most famous ones which the users can recall. 88

More likely to do It gives us an insight into the consumers behavior pattern as to what are they more likely to do if they dont find particular information.

Move to another search engine It tells the behavior of the user as to how long is he ready to wait before he finds what he is searching for. Sponsored link Company

(a)

Sample Size
No. of questionnaires- 125 No. of questions in the questionnaire-18

(b)

Sampling Unit
1. Internet users ( age 18-65 , including both the genders) 2. Public/private sector, self employed 3. Teachers/Students

(c)

Sample Method
Survey method and informal interviews. Questionnaire for consumer

(d)

Sample Location
Onliners: in cities like Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida, Indore, Mumbai, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, and other cities across India Offliners: ACCURATE INSTITUDE OF MANAGEMENT AND TECHNOLOGY,Greater Noida, Shiv Shakti Hostel, Greater Noida. HPCL Society, Greater Noida.

Source:
Based on primary as well as secondary source of data. We have covered people of all ages, sex, and education background and occupation.

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SAMPLING PROCEDURE
As the population size is medium both the cost and time associate with obtaining information from the population is high. The sample list shall contain all internet users in all age groups. With a large dominator of sample list and no grouping of information, it is essential to undertake NON-PROBABILITY SAMPLING. Probability sampling is not used as its simple and gains intuitive understanding of the market. As all the population has equal probability of getting selected as the sample population, it is convenient and most feasible. I did not use PROBABLITY SAPMLING because; in this all the population members have a known probability of being in the sample. In my case because of large population that may not be possible. We will have to develop a frame in probability sampling case it may further complicate the analysis. For non probability sampling we dont need to design a frame. SCALES USED: The various scales that used are: Interval scale Nominal scale

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METHOD OF DATA ANALYSIS

Based on the type of data collected and the target segment with the appropriate statistical methods, inference should be made. The response set of one variable is compared with another set of variable to ensure a detailed analysis of data. One should be able to recognize what type of data is appropriate for each statistic and one should be able to recognize the level of measurement for the scales that you are analyzing. Data Analysis done with the help of IT tools like MS Excel. Frequency distribution tables and Graphs.

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RESULTS AND ANALYSIS AGE

Age
below 20 20-24 25-34 35-39 40 and above

Figure 2 ANALYSIS

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Majority of the respondents in our survey consisted of people in the age group of 20-24 which was 47.60% and between 25-34 which was 43%. 3.20% respondents were in the age group 35-39 while below 20 age group had 2.60% respondents.

GENDER
Gender
Male Female Pies show counts

Figure 3

ANALYSIS

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We were surprised to find out that out of total respondents who filled out the questionnaire male to female ratio was almost equal which depicted that females were equally interested like males to fill out the questionnaire which says about their keen interest towards search engines. Moreover, we can also say that women are at par with men.

CITY
0.80%

11.20% 2.80% 1.80%

3.20% 26.20%

18.00%

City
0.80% 0.80% 2.40% 4.80% 0.80% 0.80% 2.40% 3.20%
Agra Ahmedabad Bangalore Chennai Chandigarh Delhi Faridabad Gurgaon Hyderabad Jaipur Kolkata Lucknow Mumbai Noida Pune Others

20.00%

Figure 4

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ANALYSIS We carried on our survey both online and offline in around 25 cities like Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida, Indore, Mumbai, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, and other cities across India. While Off liners in ACCURATE INSTITUDE OF MANAGEMENT AND TECHNOLOGY,Greater Noida, Shiv Shakti Hostel, Greater Noida. HPCL Society, Greater Noida.

EDUCATION

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125

100

Count

75

50

25

Under Graduate

Graduate

Post Graduate

Education

Figure 5

ANALYSIS Out of the people whom we targeted highest number of responses came from post graduates which was followed by graduates and then the under graduates which shows the decreasing trend of awareness.

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OCCUPATION
40

30

20

t n c r e P
10 0
Ed uc at ion Do E cto ngin ee r r M ed ia ot he rs
y nc lta su on C s es sin Bu g in nk sis Ba er aly ag an d an an M ch ar se Re ing s rti ve Ad g tin ke ar M er wy La m lis na ur Jo t en ud e St stat E om H R H er ak l ea R e IT nc ra su In

Occupation

Figure 6 ANALYSIS The maximum respondents were students who were keen to fill out the questionnaires which show their level of curiosity in search engines. These were followed by advertising, IT, educations which was further followed by researchers, managers and marketing people.

em

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E-MARKETING TOOLS

Emarketing tools
search engine marketing email banner ads affiliate marketing blog marketing

Figure 6 ANALYSIS 1. Search engine marketing is of course a widely popular way to drive targeted traffic to your website, blog, sales page or forum with a share of 35.20%. It was followed by the affiliate marketing which was 22.40% whereas banner ads occupied the third position with 18.4% share , while e-mail was 16% popular form of marketing and the last came the blog marketing. 2. Email marketing got a bad rap because of mass mailers and email harvesting software used by unscrupulous scam artists. With the advent of blogs and more sophisticated search engine marketing programs, email marketing might be considered a waste of time for the online marketer 3. out of the people who preferred search engine marketing 59% people were in the age group of 20-24 and 36.26% were in the age group 25-34 while only 2% below 20 preferred search engine marketing 4. none of the people below 20 preferred e-mail marketing. Majority of the people below 20 preferred banner ads 5. 56.82% post graduates favored search engine marketing followed by 54% graduates.47% graduates liked banner ads.

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6.

52.27% females preferred search engine marketing compared to 47% males while 65.22% males liked banner ads the most 7. According to our survey 52.27% people who preferred search engine marketing were students followed by 13.64% for the IT people followed by 11% for the media people.

USE SEARCH ENGINES

Use of search engine

yes i use search engine only if it is relevant to search query no i dnt use search eng

Figure 7 ANALYSIS 1. According to the survey , 59.20% people said that they used search engine only when it was relevant to their search query while 36.80% people said that they used search engine whereas 4% have never used search engines. 2. Out of the people who used search engines only when it was relevant for their search query 57.09% people were in the age group of 20-24, 32.77% people were between 25-34 3. While 59% people in the age group of 20-34 used maximum search engine 4. 51.35% graduates used search engines only when it was relevant to their query while 49.89% were post graduates 5. 51.35% males use search engine only if it is relevant to their search query compared to 48.35% females. 81% males dont use search engines and out of the males who use 53% say they use only if it is relevant to my search query 99

6. Out of the female respondents only 4.69% dont use search engines 7. 51.35% were students who use search engine if it is relevant to their search query while IT were 20.27% 8. In research and analysis 50% people use it only if it is relevant to their search query and 50% use search engines for other purpose also. Similarly in advertising 40 % people use only if it is relevant to their search query.

HOW YOU USE SEARCH ENGINES

How use
I usually use same search engine or directory I have several favorite search engine I use different search engine for different type of searches

Figure 8 ANALYSIS 1. It studies the behavior of the respondents with respect to the usage of the search engine .56.80% respondents said that they usually use the same search engine or directory for searching while 31.20% said that they have several favorite search engines. Whereas only 12% people said that they use different search engine for different type of searches. 2. out of 56.80% people who use the same search engine 48.5% people were in the age group of 20-24 and 40.8% people were in 25-34 3. In age group 20-24 ,57% people used the same search engine while 30.67% have several favorite search engines while only 11.34% use different search engines for different type of searches. 4. Out of the male who responded 57.3% use the same search engine and 37.7% have different search engines while 4.9%use different search engines for

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different type of searches and out of the females who responded 56.25% use the same search engine ,25% people have several favorite search engines and 18.25% use different search engines for different type of searches. 5. In advertising 60% people use same search engine while 40% have several favorite search engines. 25% people in research and analysis use different different search engines for different type of searches. 6. In media people use different search engines for different type of searches.

VISIT SEARCH ENGINE

visiteng

online research recreation email Purchasing a product online

Figure 9 ANALYSIS 81.40% people say that they visit the search engine for doing online research or when they are looking for some information while 9.60% say that they visit search engine for recreation while 6.40% purchase a product online and only 2.60% go to search engines looking for e-mail.

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In age group 20-24, 89% people go for online research while 5% for purchasing a product and recreation Out of the males,79.10% go for online research while 13% go for recreation Out of the females, 83.33% go for online research while 8% for purchasing a product online Among the post graduates, 89% go for online research while 5% for recreation while in graduates 12% go for recreation and 75% for online research Amongst all the occupations maximum people go to search engines looking for information

ENTRY REVIEW

Entry review
only a few first page first two page first three page more than three pages

Figure 10 ANALYSIS 1. 38.40% people said that they reviewed the first page before clicking on an entry in search engine while 23.20% said that they looked at only a few

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2. 3. 4.

5.

while 20% people reviewed the first two pages, 10.40% reviewed more than three pages and 8% first three pages. Out of 38.40% who reviewed first page ,47.40% people were in the age of 25-34, 43% were in age 20-24 In age group 35-39,75% people reviewed the first page while 25% reviewed only a few entries Out of the males who responded 36.07% reviewed the first page compared to 40.63% of females. 22.95% reviewed first two page in males while 17.19% in females. 28.13% females viewed only first few entries compared to 18.03% males .males viewed more than three pages compared to females. 9.34% males reviewed first three page compared to 6.25% females.

OFTEN VISIT

Often visit

once a day twice/thrice a day once a week several times a week several times each month less frequently never

Figure 11

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ANALYSIS 1. 35.20% visit search engine once a day while 22.40% visit several times a week, 21.60% visit twice/thrice a day compared to 10.40% who visit once a week while 1.60% people never visit a search engine. 2. In the age group 20-24, 33.19% visit once a day while 23.9% visit once a week and 3.36% visit less frequently.In 40 and above, 44.44% people visit search engine once a day . 3. Out of people who said several times a month, 67.86% were in age group 20-24 4. Out of the male respondents, 34.43% visit once a day , while 29.51%visit twice/thrice a day,19.67% visit several times a week and only 8.2% visit once a week. 5. Out of the females, 35.94% visited once a day while 25% visited several times a week whereas 14.06% visited twice/thrice a day 6. 41.67% postgraduates visit once a day compared to 30.91% graduates. 7. 60% advertising people visited twice/thrice a day, while in business and research and analysis 50% people visited once a day. 8. 40% students visited once a day and 28.31% visited several times a week.

CLICK PROMPT

104

Click prompt
accuracy quality of information speed all of the above

Figure 12 ANALYSIS 1. 48% people said that all the above reasons prompted them to click on the search engine while 24% layed importance on the quality of information whereas speed occupied 16% and accuracy 12%. 2. In age group of 20-24, 47.06% people layed stress on all the above 3. Amongst the males 42.62% stressed on all the above while it was 53.13% fir females.29.51% people layed stress on quality of information compared to 18.75% for females. 4. For researchers quality and all the above were reasons which prompted them to click .for a businessman accuracy and quality of information were important. 5. A marketing person layed 42.24% importance to accuracy.

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LIST SEARCH ENGINE

3.24% 1.82% 2.02% 13.56%

4.25%

trans1
google yahoo aol msn dogpile mozilla wikipedia others

44.33% 8.91%

21.86%

Figure 13 ANALYSIS 1. 44.33% respondents preferred Google and considered it to be the best search engine while yahoo followed the trend with 21.86% share followed by msn with 8.91% share 2. In the age group of 20-24 ,42.44% preferred Google while yahoo followed with 20.91% 3. Those who opted for Google maximum of them were in the age group of 20-24 and 25-34 4. 52.50% undergraduates opted for Google compared to 44.49% post graduates and 42.6% for graduates. 5. Out of the males 46.47% opted for google compared to 42.29% females. as far as yahoo is concerned males were 22.32% and females were 20.95% while the wikipedia had 3%e each

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6. Amongst the various professions majority of the people preferred google be it advertsing, journalism, business or marketing.

LIKELY TO DO

Likely to do

Enter a more words to better target the search Switch to another search engine+enter the same keyword

Give up Switch to different search engine+enter the different

Figure 14 ANALYSIS 1. 81.60% respondents said that they enter more keywords to better target the search followed by 12.80% for switching to another search engine and entering the same keyword. While only 3.20% people were ready to give up and 2.40% people switched to different search engine and entered different keyword. 2. Amongst the people who would enter more keywords 49.26% were in 20-24 while out of the people who were ready to give up 75% were in 25-34 and 25% in 2024while 91% people in 25-34 were ready to switch to different search engine and enter different keyword 3. 50% postgraduates would switch to another search engine and enter the same keyword and 66.66% for a different keyword while none of the undergraduates were ready to give up

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4. Out of the males 86.89% would enter more words to better target the search,9.84% would switch to another search engine and enter same keyword while none of them were ready to give up 5. Out of the females 76.5% would enter more words to better target the search while 6.25% were ready to give up while 1.56% would switch to a different search engine and enter different keywords 6. In marketing 14.29% were ready to give up while majority would enter more words to better target the search.

MOVE TO ANOTHER SEARCH ENGINE

Move to another search engine

after first few entries after first page after first two page after first three page more than three page

Figure 15 ANALYSIS 1. 27.20% respondents said that would move to another search or search engine after the first two pages while 24.08% said that after first page then followed 20% for the first three pages then 16% for first few entries and 12% for more than three pages.

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2. In age group 20-24,26.47% would move to another search engine after first page while 23.45% after first two pageswhile in 25-34 maximum was for after first two pages i.e 29.77% while 12.09% for first few entries. 3. In 35-39 and 40 and above people would not move after reviewing just the few entries 4. In males, 29.5% would move after first page while 13.11% would move after the few entries while 11.43% would go for more than three pages 5. In females,31.25% would move after first two pages,20.31% after first three pages while12.50% for more than three pages 6. 25.45% graduates would move after first few entries while 31.675 postgraduates would view first two pages and 23.3% after first page

SPONSORED LINK

Click sponsored link

Yes i follow the sponsored link Never click on sponsored link +follow natural search result What are sponsored link?

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Figure 16 ANALYSIS 1. 58.60% respondents said that they would never click on sponsored links but click on natural search result while 37.40% followed the sponsored link and 4% never knew about sponsored link. 2. In the age group 20-24, 60.08% people never click on sponsored links but click on natural search result while 35% followed the sponsored link while in 35-39 and 40 and above people knew what are sponsored links 3. 62.7% males would never click on sponsored links but click on natural search result compared to 54.69% for females while 34.02% males followed the sponsored link 40.6% females followed it. 4. 57% postgraduates would never click on sponsored links but click on natural search result compared to 58% graduates and 70% undergraduates 5. 5% postgraduates never knew what are sponsored links 6. 41.9% students followed the sponsored links compared to 40% advertising people 7. Out of those people who followed the sponsored link25.67% were from Mumbai and 23.5% from Bangalore 8. 24.5% in delhi would never click on sponsored links but click on natural search result along with Bangalore with 23.3%

COMPANY

110

Company
agree neutral disagree

Figure 17 ANALYSIS 1. 39.20% were neutral with the view that seeing a company listed among the top results on the search engine would make them think that the company is among the top one listed while 36% agreed with the idea but 24.80% disagreed 2. Out of the 36% who agreed 46% were in 20-24 and 7.7% 40 and above and amongst those who disagreed 50% were between 25-34 and 3% between 35-39 3. Out of those who agreed 55.5% were post graduates and in graduates 45.45% were neutral 4. In males 39.34% agreed with the idea while 34.4% were neutral but in females 43.75% were neutral and 32.2% agreed while 23.4% disagreed

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CONCLUSION
With this research we came to the conclusion that online advertising is the next big thing that will capture the Indian market 4-5 years down the line. The Search engine is patronized by a profile of people who use it as a medium to get basic information or research products before they actually step out and make an informed buy. In an era where there is paucity of time, Search engine serves as a good medium to do basic data collection on availability of products and services. Search engine marketing is the most popular form of E-marketing tool wheras blog marketing is the least popular. 20-24 is the maximum target group which prefers the search engine marketing 59.20% people use search engines only if it is relevant to their search query In female only 4.69% dont use search engines 56.80% respondents use the same search engine or directory for searching 12% people use different search engine for different type of searches Male to female ratio who used the same search engine was 50 :50 Online research is the reason for visiting search engine Media people use different search engines for different type of searches. 38.40% people reviewed the first page before clicking on an entry in search engine 8% viewed the first three pages before clicking on an entry in the search engine 36.07% males reviewed the first page compared to 40.63% females 28.13% females viewed only first few entries compared to 18.03% males 35.20% visit search engine once a day while 1.60% people never visit a search engine. 40 and above age group, 44.44% people visit search engine once a day . 60% advertising people visited twice/thrice a day 48% people found speed, accuracy and quality of information the reason click on the search engine 44.33% respondents preferred google while yahoo followed the trend with 21.86% ,msn with 8.91% share 46.47% males opted for google compared to 42.29% females Maximum people who opted for Google were in the age group of 20-24 and 25-34 81.60% respondents said that they enter more keywords to better target the search 2.40% people switched to different search engine and entered different keyword. 27.20% respondents said that would move to another search after the first two pages 58.60% respondents clicked on natural search result 4% never knew about sponsored link. 62.7% males would never click on sponsored links but click on natural search result compared to 54.69% for females Maximum people in delhi would click on the natural result

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36% agreed with the idea that seeing a company listed among the top results is among the top one listed

LIMITATIONS:
Some of the limitation we faced while conducting our research were as follows:

Measurement error: When a researcher conducts fieldwork she/he is possibly

able to estimate inaccuracies in measurement through the standard deviation and standard error, but these are sometimes not published in secondary sources. The only solution is to try to speak to the individuals involved in the collection of the data to obtain some guidance on the level of accuracy of the data. The problem is sometimes not so much 'error' but differences in levels of accuracy required by decision makers.

Source bias: Researchers have to be aware of vested interests when they consult
secondary sources. Those responsible for their compilation may have reasons for wishing to present a more optimistic or pessimistic set of results for their organisation. It is not unknown, similarly, and with equal frequency, commercial organisations have been known to inflate estimates of their market shares.

Reliability: The reliability of published statistics may vary over time. It is not
uncommon, for example, for the systems of collecting data to have changed over time but without any indication of this to the reader of published statistics. Geographical or administrative boundaries may be changed by government, or the basis for stratifying a sample may have altered. Other aspects of research methodology that affect the reliability of secondary data are the sample size, response rate, questionnaire design and modes of analysis.

Time scale: Most censuses take place at 10 year intervals, so data from this and
other published sources may be out-of-date at the time the researcher wants to make use of the statistics. The time period during which secondary data was first compiled may have a substantial effect upon the nature of the data.

Shelf life: Market research data represents customer attitudes and behaviors at a
given moment in time. Usually, attitudes and behaviors change slowly over time. But unexpected events can impact that, particularly in high-tech (for instance, a revolutionary break-through, or an unexpected price war). Some types of studies can be repeated every three years and be fine, such as segmentation (segmentation models are usually based on broad attitudes and behaviors that are unlikely to change radically in a short period of time), but studies assessing usage and purchasing patterns need more frequent updating.

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Incomplete Questionnaire: Respondents did not give a full answer simply

because they forget to mention important points. Some respondents required prompting or reminding of the types of answer they could give. The other reason for the same may be time shortage, disinterested in filling the questionnaire, lack of knowledge etc.

Questionnaire Error: The questionnaire designing has to be careful so that only

required data is concisely revealed and there is no redundant data generated. The questions have to be worded carefully so that the questions are not loaded and does not lead to a bias in the respondents mind.

Respondent Error: The respondents selected to be interviewed were not always

available and willing to cooperate also in some cases the respondents were found to not have the knowledge, opinion, attitudes or facts required additionally uninformed response errors and response styles also led to survey error.

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SUGGESTIONS
Blog marketing should be a NO NO Search engine are a good place to market for youth Maximum ads should be given on the first page Attraction to be included for people in age group 40 and above as they visit the search engine once a day Companies should go for more and better keywords as 89% enter more keywords for a better search Rigorous advertising to be done on Google and yahoo Search engine should lay more stress on the quality of information Search engine users are demonstrating a preference to remain with a particular search engine and re-launch unsuccessful initial searches as longer keyword searches...marketers need to...target these longer keyword phrases so they can be readily found by searchers Marketers should focus for ads on search engines as 81% come to search engine for online research.

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ANNEXURES
QUESTIONNAIRE
Dear friend, I am a student of Amity Business School, Amity University, Uttar Pradesh. Under the guidance of Prof.Vandana Gupta, faculty of Marketing, I am conducting a survey to gauge the importance of search engine in E-marketing and do they generate customer loyalty and how. Therefore, I request you to kindly to give your valuable time and participate in the survey. Thank you.

1. Name ____________ 2. Age ____________ 3. Gender ____________ 4. City/Location ____________ 5. Education Level a) Under Graduate b) Graduate c) Post Graduate d) Others- Specify 6. Occupation ____________

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7. What type of e-marketing tools do you prefer ? a) b) c) d) e) search engine marketing email banner ads affiliate marketing blog marketing

8. Do you use search engines? a) Yes, I often use search engines b) Only if its relevant to my search query c) No, I dont use search engines 9 . Which would best describe how you use search engines? a) I usually use the same search engine or directory b) I have several favourite search engine and use them interchangeably c) I use different search engines for different type of searches 10. Why do you visit a search engine? a) b) c) d) Online research Purchasing a product online Recreation (photography ,online community) E-mail

11. When you perform a search on a search engine and are looking over the results, approximately how many entries do you typically review before clicking one?

a) b) c) d) e)

Only a few The first page First two page First three page More than three page

12. How often do you visit a search engine? a) b) c) d) e) f) g) once a day twice/thrice a day once a week several times each week several times each month less frequently never 117

13. What prompts you to click on the search engine? a) b) c) d) Accuracy Quality of information Speed All of the above

14. List some of the search engines in order of convenience and Satisfaction they offer you 1. 2. 3. 4. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

15. When you perform a search on a search engine and dont find what you are looking for, what are you typically more likely to do? a) b) c) d) Enter a few more words to better target the search Switch to another search engine and enter the same keyword you first tried Give up Switch to different search engine and enter the different keyword you first tried

16. If you dont find what you are looking for at what point do you move either to another search engine or to another search on the same engine? a) b) c) d) e) After the first few entries After the first page After first two pages After first three pages More than three pages

17. Do you follow the sponsored links? a) Yes ,I follow the sponsored link b) I never click on Sponsored Links but follow the natural search result c) What are sponsored links?

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18. Please state how much you agree/disagree with the following statement: Seeing a company listed among the top results on a search engine makes me think that the company is a top one within its field. a) Agree b) Neutral c) Disagree

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Articles: State of search engine marketing by Chris Sherman Search Engine Marketing Is a Rocket Search engine market by Winnicott Google Search Engine Analysis Why not.pdf Websites: www.iamai.co.in www.strategiy.com www.businessline.com www.thehindu.com www.google.com www.e-consultancy.com Books: Research Methodology by C.R.Kothari Statistics for Management by Richard I.Levin & David S.Rubin E-marketing

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