GoTo, Overture, Y!, AdWords, XXx

David Lewis just blogged about his 5th anniversary of the day when he left overture to talk about his memories from a time when Overture was not owned by Yahoo! and Overture was still called GoTo.com*.

Very interesting background information and summary from a business development perspective. I am sure the GoTo.com Development Team was also very excited about being at the fore front of a new Advertising System and being the first to solve problems that come along with it.

It was a nice trip back in time though. Yeah, the good old times. I remember being an Goto.com affiliate via BeFree**.

I remember having a hard time with the GoTo program because I wasn’t really knowing where to put it and what to do with it.

I have to be honest and admit that I was one of the people that did not like the idea of paid search and bidding for placement very much. It did not feel right and I rarely clicked a paid link ever.

To my defense must I add, that paid search still does not feel right for me and that I still not click paid listings (and Google AdSense Ads) very often, mostly unintentionally actually.

I did adapt to the use of paid search to advertise fairly early and still use various PPC Search Engines to promote whatever I currently consider worth promotion and had the time for to do my homework first.

I am also sure that the current form of paid search will become a thing of the past. Search Engines actually change slowly but steady to more performance based models, be it the higher ranking of ads with better CTR*bid price instead of bid amount itself or any other factors that are being introduced to favor better converting (or relevant/targeted) Ads over poor converting ads that bid a higher amount to be even displayed at all.

* GoTo.com is now owned by go2 Directory Systems and redirects to their primary site g2.com.

** I called BeFree “Reporting.net” back then (5 years ago), knowing nothing about a Site called BeFree.com. BeFree.com redirects today to CJ.com, but Reporting.net still shows the old Partner Gateway login after redirecting to affiliates.befree.com. (I wonder if Reporting.net is for sale now or in the near future..