Search Engine Industry Insights

Successful acquisition news came from one of the leading marketing agencies. WebSourced, Inc.(www.websourced.com) and a wholly owned subsidiary of CGI Holding Corporation today announced that the Company has acquired the assets of Smart Interactive Ltd (www.smart-interactive.co.uk). The acquired company is a provider of search engine marketing services to companies throughout Great Britain and Europe.

Based in Newcastle, England, Smart Interactive is led by world-renowned search engine expert, Mike Grehan. He is the author of the best-selling book "Search Engine Marketing" and one of Europe's most recognized and sought-after search engine marketing speakers.

The acquisition of Smart Interactive will position WebSourced with a full-time, fully staffed UK office. This will set the stage for the Company to expand services in Great Britain and throughout the rest of Europe.

In the stock market, tech stocks got a boost partly from Yahoo http://www.yahoo.com/ . The company announced today that its board has approved a program to buy back up to $3 billion or 7 percent, in stock over the next five years. The experts see such programs to be a sign of corporate confidence. As of March 4, Yahoo had 1.4 billion shares outstanding. Based on Wednesday's closing price for Yahoo stock of $30.87 the buyback represents about 97 million shares.

icrossing promoted Nanu Ramamrutham from Director of Product Development to Chief Technology Officer. Mr. Ramamrutham, who joined icrossing after more than a decade of service with Lucent Technologies.

"Building out best-in-class technology at the leading independent search engine marketing agency is an unbelievable opportunity, and now it's time to seize it," says Mr. Ramamrutham. "My top priority will continue to be developing technology that enables icrossing to provide even better service for our clients."

Icrossing is the only interactive agency dedicated entirely to search engine marketing listed in Adweek's "Top 50 Interactive Agencies of 2005".

The news about new launch came from Cybergolf, a provider in online marketing tools. The company launched Cybergolf Search (www.cybergolfsearch.com), a search engine designed and developed to fill the missing need for relevant web search results for the golf industry and consumer.  
 
Cybergolf Search is built using Vertical Search Technology (VST), developed by Cybergolf. VST enables refined searching coupled with embedded e-commerce tools.

"The Cybergolf Search engine that Cybergolf has created is a welcome addition to the online world of search engines. This tool will be a user-friendly mechanism that will make it much easier for golfers to find 'official' golf course websites and accurate golf course information." said Kris Strauss, director of Sales and Marketing for Scottsdale-based OB Sports Golf Management. 
 
The challenge with mainstream search engines is the broad application of search criteria. An example of this is when searching for "Seattle golf courses," a mainstream search engine comes up with over 400,000 results, says from the company.