Overture.com
Yahoo! Search Marketing
Overture.com, is a pay per click search engine now owned by Yahoo! and is being renamed Yahoo! Search Marketing. The results from the Overture search engine are displayed on the entire Yahoo! Network, including Yahoo! Search and also MSN search.
History
Overture began in February 1998 as GoTo.com. It was the first search engine to ever successfully offer a paid search engine placement program.
A company called Open Text had tried a similar service in 1996, but they had failed. Their pay for placement search engine model was met by complaints against the commercialization of internet search. Just two years later when Goto.com launched, the reaction was much different, though. By July 1998, advertisers were already bidding over $1 per click on certain keywords.
After over three years of continued success, GoTo.com renamed itself Overture Services, Inc. on October 8, 2001. The concept behind the rename was to use a name that would cover multiple products and services.
In 2003, Yahoo! bought Overture for $1.7 billion. Yahoo was Overture's biggest distribution partner at that time. Since then, Yahoo has been phasing the brand name Overture out in favor of the brand name “Yahoo! Search Marketing”.
Advertisers
The Overture / Yahoo! Search Marketing platform offers an advertiser a way to get their ad to display on search engines for keywords chosen by the advertiser. For example, the owner of a website related to blue widgets could pay to have their ad displayed when anyone searched for blue widgets.
Under the old Overture system, the advertise willing to pay the most per click got ranked the highest, which means more exposure and more traffic. Under the new system being rolled out, several other factors will be taken into consideration, including the click through rate of the ad. These changes are designed to help rank relevant, quality ads higher.
Under both the old system and the new system, ads underwent review by one of Overture's editorial staff to ensure that only sites meeting certain criteria were displayed. Under the new system, though, some of the review will be automated to allow advertisers to get their ads to display right away, without having to wait for the editorial review.
Distribution
Overture displays its advertisers' ads through search network partners. These include Yahoo! Search (both before and after Yahoo! acquired Overture), and other Yahoo! Search properties such as Altavista.com and AllTheWeb.com
MSN.com has also been a Overture distribution partner for many years. Recently, though, MSN has launched their own pay per click search platform, and MSN is phasing out results from Yahoo! Search Marketing.
Languages
English
Address
- 74 N. Pasadena Avenue, Third Floor
- Pasadena CA 91103 US
Contact
- Overture Services, Inc
-
- +1 626 685 5655
Additional Information
Related Domains
External Links
- Stock: OVER
- Alexa: Overture.com
