f3badd75_trepreneurship___Bauer_College__Topic
[Date] January 21 [Speaker] Zsolt Katona UC Berkeley [Topic] 
"The Role of Search Engine Optimization in Search Marketing" Click here to read Abstract Web sites invest signi?cant resources in trying to in?uence their visibility among online search results. In addition to paying for sponsored links, they invest in methods known as search engine optimization (SEO). We study the economic incentives of Web sites to invest in SEO and its implications on search engine and advertiser payo?s. We focus on SEO methods that improve the ranking of a site among the search results without improving its quality. We ?nd that the process is equivalent to an all-pay auction with noise and headstarts. Our results show that, under certain conditions, a positive level of search engine optimization improves the search engine's ranking quality and thus the satisfaction of its visitors. In particular, if the quality of sites coincides with their valuation for visitors then search engine optimization serves as a mechanism that improves the ranking by correcting measurement errors. While this bene?ts consumers and increases tra?c to the search engine, sites participating in search engine optimization could be worse o? due to wasteful spending unless their valuation for tra?c is very high. We also investigate how search engine optimization a?ects the revenues from sponsored links. Surprisingly, we ?nd that in many cases search engine revenues are increased by SEO.
Spring 11 Seminars - Dept. of Marketing & Entrepreneurship | Bauer College
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