December 15, 2003

During the last few years we have seen a tremendous growth in the number of pay-per-click search engines. Apart from Overture, Google AdWords and (in Europe) Espotting, few of them have managed to make any significant impression.

There has also been new paid inclusion search engines such as Global Business Listing, offering personalized advertising and marketing services to its clients. However, there are a few medium sized pay-per-click search engine companies that have managed to build brands -- among them FindWhat, Kanoodle and ah-ha.

ah-ha has now decided to get a new name: Enhance. Enhance explains that the name ah-ha.com was conceived as the name of a consumer search engine, whereas the company now has evolved into a business-to-business paid listings provider.

Also, the spelling of the name was somewhat confusing to many users (We constantly found ourselves using the spelling of the Norwegian pop group a-ha).

ah-ha advertisers need not to worry, as all URLs and Account Management System features will be updated automatically.

In March ah-ha/Enhance was acquired by Marchex, a company focusing on search marketing, paid inclusion, paid listings and conversion tracking.

Another PPC search engine to make its appeareance in the spring of 2004 will be Net Globe Media and will be very similar to Overture's business model.

Source: Pandia & GCIS

        

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