Pickings are getting pretty slim in the major search engine industry. This year, we lost GO, and we’ll most likely be losing NBCi and Excite before the end of the year. Excite closed Magellan recently. Every time an engine folds, it’s painful to those of us in the industry.

And regretfully, we haven’t had a new spider engine to surface in some time . . . until the Aesop engine.

Aesop (http://www.aesop.com) is a brand new spider search engine established by the Aesop Marketing Corporation, a well-known marketing company that promotes products such as 1001 Killer Internet Marketing Tactics and Swiss Army App for Webmasters.

What makes Aesop rather unique is that a marketing company developed it, rather than some highly skilled technical gurus who might need to take Business 101. In other words, Aesop just might succeed in doing what the majority of the major engines haven’t: make a profit!

Because a marketing company developed Aesop, you’ll see some definite differences in the way they do business. For one, when you submit to the engine, you’re asked if you want to receive a copy of their online marketing newsletter. The choice is yours. In other words, they’re using the power of permission e-mail marketing to harvest e-mail addresses for future marketing mailouts.

Do you blame them? If you set up a search engine or even a vertical directory, wouldn’t you do the same thing? You’d be wasting valuable resources if you didn’t.

What else does Aesop do that’s different from some of the major engines? To begin with, it’s keeping its search page simple. Walking in the footsteps of Google, Aesop does one thing on its search page: search.

Another unusual aspect of the Aesop engine is that it has its own META tag (http://www.aesop.com/metatag.htm). Will it help you with rankings in other engines? It’s doubtful, but Mark Joyner, CEO of the Aesop Marketing Corporation and a top Internet marketing expert, says that it will definitely boost your rank at the Aesop engine dramatically.

To learn more about the Aesop engine, I asked Mr. Joyner some questions.

Question:

In what direction are you headed with the engine? A portal? Pay per clicks? Or, a combination?

Joyner:

We have a unique advertising model that we are perfecting right now. Should be out in a month or so. It won't be like anything else you've seen yet.

Question:

If you're considered PPC's, who are you looking to partner with?

Joyner:

We have considered partnering with existing PPC engines (I can't say who), but that probably won't be the route we go.

Question:

So many of the major engines have tremendous problems with spamming. So far, what are you experiencing in terms of spamming? What practices do you consider to be spamming?

Joyner:

Of course from day 1, the spammers will get in there and try to mess up the results of any engine. We are taking an aggressive approach to preserve the integrity of the engine for the searcher.

I consider the following to be spamming:

* Deliberately attempting to have your site indexed under an unrelated term. (Which is really stupid in my book anyway, since someone searching for "pamela anderson" probably does not want to hear about a “make money fast scheme.”)

* Deliberately attempting to have the same content indexed more than once by submitting the same content on different HTML pages. (Once again, stupid anyway, since someone seeing a listing 10 times in an engine will know what the spammer is up to, and will have lost all credibility.)

Question:

Do you foresee any problems in handling WebPosition Gold queries? Do you have any plans to develop a relationship with Brent Winters and WebPosition Gold, which would also help Aesop's visibility?

Joyner:

I prefer not to answer that question at this time.

Question:

What is the standard submission to index period?

Joyner:

Varies, but we're hoping to get it down to 48 to 72 hours.

Question:

Will you be using human editors to review submissions at some point in the future?

Joyner:

Absolutely. Of course, indexing will be automatic, but we already have humans spot checking for spam and quality.

Question:

Sometimes when you search on a phrase at Aesop, no results come up. Other times, you search on the same phrase and you get lots of results, many of which are totally irrelevant for the query. Will the relevancy of the search results improve, and if so, when can we expect to see a difference?

Joyner:

You shouldn't see any blank search results anymore. You probably caught us while we were doing maintenance. Over the next 8-12 weeks we will incrementally be making minor tweaks to the algorithm to improve relevancy.

Question:

What steps are you taking to increase visibility of Aesop, so that it becomes more well known?

Joyner:

I prefer not to talk about our marketing strategies at this time - we're privately held, so it's to our benefit to be tight lipped. However, all I can say is that you can expect to see huge traffic leaps in the next 1-3 months.

Question:

How often does your crawler spider the Web? Is it best to submit each page or your site, or will the spider crawl through the site and index the majority of pages?

Joyner:

We're constantly crawling.

Submitting your main page and then using our accelerated addition feature is the best way to go. This is something unique. If you get one page indexed, we'll email you access to a facility where you can add pages *on the fly* and they will be indexed in two hours.

(By the way, Aesop’s user agent is aesop_com_spiderman.)

Question:

Tell me more about the Aesop META tag. It says on your site, "The Aesop Meta Tag is a new standard that has changed the relationship between search engines and searchers. This tag helps searchers better distinguish various types of web sites and find exactly what they are looking for." I understand that this tag is very important in terms of the Aesop engine. Do you see any of the other major engines moving toward the use of this tag?

Joyner:

I think that as more sites adopt the new convention (and thousands and thousands of sites already have), other engines may adopt it as well. We are doing everything we can to get general acceptance of the convention as we believe it will greatly improve the experience of a searcher and help them find what they are looking for faster.

Question:

How many pages are in the index at this point in time?

Joyner:

About 5 million including pages yet to be indexed.

Question:

Do you have any plans to add directory results in the future? If so, will they be Aesop-generated directory results, or will you partner with someone like LookSmart or the ODP?

Joyner:

We're not planning on that at this time.

Question:

Do you have any plans for a pay submission service in the future, similar to the way Inktomi operates?

Joyner:

We have a totally different model that we will release in the next month or so. Submissions will always be free, but advertising will be totally different.

Question:

Is link popularity an important factor for determining ranking for the Aesop engine? Will you be adding click-through popularity in the future?

Joyner:

We're considering many factors to determine relevancy at this time. Link popularity will definitely play a role.

Question:

Are standard META tags important to the Aesop engine?

Joyner:

Absolutely.

Question:

If someone wants to rank high in the Aesop engine, what do you recommend that they do?

Joyner: a. Submit valid, good looking pages with a classy title and description that jives with your subdued keywords meta tag.

b. Use the aesop meta tag (relevancy boost given automatically).

c. Place an aesop.com search box on your site (relevancy boost given automatically).

d. Don't spam.

e. Don't keyword stuff.

For More Information . . .

For more information about the Aesop engine, read this press release posted at Search Engine Guide:

http://www.searchengineguide.com/pr/2001/04/23_pr1.html

In Conclusion . . .

While still in its teething stage and without the ability to send you a tremendous amount of traffic at this point in time, the Aesop engine is still one to watch. With the marketing power behind the engine, we can expect some interesting developments in the future.

And, maybe this engine will be around for a while!

Robin Nobles is Director of Training for the Academy of Web Specialists. Robin has taught several thousand students in her online and onsite search engine positioning courses during the past several years. Her latest book Web Site Analysis and Reporting, as well as her past book, Streetwise Maximize Web Site Traffic, can be ordered through Amazon. Visit the Academy’s training site to learn more about their search engine ranking courses and products. http://www.onlinewebtraining.com

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