MediaVision Blog : Search Engine Marketing

Microsoft runs LiveSearch, Microsoft is also the parent company of aQuantive. aQuantive owns Avenue A Razorfish, which is a search marketing firm. They are also planning on partnering with another search marketing firm called The Search Agency offering comprehensive SEO services to small companies.

And it doesn’t stop there; Microsoft’s adManager also seems to offer a wide selection of search marketing services.

But its not just Microsoft, Google also owns a SEO company called Performics. Performics is one of the most popular SEO companies around. Is this not a conflict of interest?

Sounds a tad dubious doesn’t it?

For now, it’s all about the opportunity and these search engines have clearly realised the benefits that such a partnership can reap. It’s a win-win situation for the SEO firms as well as the search engines.

The SEO firms can use the association as leverage to attract clients. This is unethical on so many levels, especially to the rest of the Search Engine Marketing firms out there that don’t have that association. What happens when Performics, Avenue A and The Search Engine start dominating Live Search? And how natural are natural listings when a search engine owns a company that offers natural search optimisation?

If Google keeps Performics, it could potentially have adverse effects on the Serps as mentioned by James in his comment on a post at searchenginejournal. James argued that by keeping Performics, Google will turn into an agency for selling placement in their organic results, thus effectively making every link in their index a “sponsored link”. He recons that overtime this will deteriorate their results and users will switch to the fairer little guys. So eventually they will have to draw a line and either make their ranking fairer, or dispose of it.

This is an interesting viewpoint but I’m not entirely sure if I agree with James. There are too many factors to consider.

The bottom line is that these guys have an unfair advantage and may have access to all sorts of valuable information and benefits that the rest do not have. The playing field is not very level anymore and I certainly hope someone steps in soon before the precedent is set.