Why we need a new paid-content search engine

So, does it exist? Is there an existing or planned search engine that will explore behind a pay-wall in order to rank results?

Until that happens, many top information providers will continue to exist in a secret and unranked ‘world wide black hole’.

The search engine that solves the dilemma will find big money waiting from participants.

The key is in owning the distribution channel. A search engine that ranks a website according to the relevance and amount of information it contains will own the market. It will be called something along the lines of www.informationranker.com .

Search engines, Google, Bing and Yahoo etc do not recognise most ‘centres of excellence’ and top information websites because their content sits behind a pay-wall. That is unsustainable, a nonsense.

Website publishers are currently forced to design their website for SEO purposes to drive traffic to their site and register on search engine crawls. Business models include:

·         Free content, newsletters, blogs, forums and social media

·         Multiple affiliate and other links to other relevant websites

·         Open access to articles or summaries that contain key words, linked to a subscription offer. Examples of this summary / pay-wall model can be seen at Which? Magazine, Marketing Sherpa, EMarketer.

Looking at those three examples above, we can assume that hundreds of hours are spent on creating free access pages, social media sites and links - all to increase traffic to the publisher's site - and all because the search engines don't access pages behind a paywall. 

Google can't help

Google analytics, although the method of choice for monitoring how, where and how often a website is viewed, doesn't work behind a paywall. Neither does the Google search box.

However well these business models work now, they will no longer be relevant when the new search engine ranks websites according to relevance and content quantity, the two key measures.

After all, why should the best website be hidden as they are now? Why shouldn’t the Internet user discover which are the leading sources of information? Why should he be continually presented with second and third tier choices?

With this change, the current search engines will find pay-per-click revenue drops dramatically as ad-heavy, but information-poor websites are ignored - and the market leaders take their place.

Peter Hobday

http://www.informationranker.com