Lycos InSite re-launches with new look and easier submission interface
Lycos today announced the redesign and re-launch of their InSite paid inclusion service. Since February 2002, Lycos has battled to increase the popularity of its InSite service, struggling to compete with established companies such as Position Technologies. In an effort to take advantage of an estimated $1.7 billion industry, Lycos has listened to feedback from search engine marketers and with this re-launch, hopes to steal a significant share of the paid inclusion market. I recently sat down with Adam Soroca, group product manager for Lycos InSite and took a sneak peek at the revamped service.

The first thing you notice with the new service, is the enhanced look and feel of the website. The old InSite website suffered from too many assumptions. Lycos assumed you knew about paid inclusions and how to submit your website to the search engines. With the new design, Lycos caters more to the beginner or inexperienced search engine marketer, providing a simple explanation of the service being offered. For example, instead of labeling one service “Paid Inclusion� they have changed the name to “Search Engine Submission�. A subtle change, but one that instantly makes it easier for the inexperienced marketer to understand the type of service being offered.

Lycos wanted to move away from industry terminology such as “paid inclusion� and be more descriptive with their wording, hence using “search engine submission�, explained Adam Soroca.

The new interface also introduces several enhanced tutorial areas including an Introduction to Search Engine Marketing section and a How Search Works area. Both of these sections offer information on how search engines work and what benefit search engine marketing brings to a business. Everything is covered here, including layman’s terminology to describe how search engine spiders gather information from the Internet. Tom Wilde, global manager of search services for Terra Lycos explains, “Our goal with the new Lycos InSite interface is to educate advertisers and site owners on how paid inclusion works�.

In addition to making the site easier to understand, Lycos has updated the actual submission interface to make it more “user friendly�. Their URL Suggestion Tool allows anyone to quickly determine which URLs of their website should be submitted. Don’t know the names of the pages within your site or need some suggestions on which ones to submit? With InSite, you can spider your website and see a list of suggested URLs to submit using paid inclusion. While this is currently limited to spidering 50 URLs and does not group pages by folder, Adam tells me these will be added enhancements in the next version due in around 45 days.

The newly redesigned InSite service also includes:

• Easy site submission to FAST and Inktomi paid inclusion
• Distribution on top search engines like Lycos, HotBot, MSN and LookSmart
• Rapid inclusion and frequent refresh of content
• Detailed click, keyword and site optimization reports
• Cost calculators that estimate the paid inclusion costs
• Discounts for multiple submissions

While the Lycos InSite service utilizes the back-end technology of Position Technologies, the company hopes that the added extras, multiple submission discounts and a search engine tutorial will be more than enough to bring search engine marketers, of all levels and experience, flocking to use the InSite service.

Andy Beal | permalink | +marktd |