Ok it has been 7 months since the launch of the Sensis Search Engine and I have to say it has been one of the most expensive launches in Australian Internet history – for absolutely terrible results.
I have looked through our log file of over 200,000 visitors (that is visitors not hits) across all of our Agents websites since the July 2004 launch and the results are a complete embarrassment. Less than 3% of our visitors come from the Sensis Search Engine and in one case we pay for clicks!
On one hand you could say that the sites may not be indexed in the search engine and therefore results are both my clients and my fault, but this can be proven to be untrue.
I have a marketing campaign set up for Google Ad words with a range of 500 keywords and these eaact same keywords are also used in the Sensis Bid smart campaign. In this period I have spent over $7000.00 USD on Google and less than $200 AUD on Sensis on the same keywords.
In this period we have received 82,124 visitors from the Google Search Engine directly and just 903 visitors from Sensis!
Australian Internet users have simply voted with their clicks and the Sensis Search Engine is a barren ‘click’ desert.
Simply put…….no one uses it.
I have been watching closely what the ratings companies Red Sheriff and Hitwise have been seeing and Sensis does not even get a 1% share by any of their Top Search Engine results, in fact they are never mentioned.
So why is this so?
The Sensis Engine looks smart, it works quite well and under certain keywords provides results that are comparable to other search engines such as the Google goliath. The problem I can see is that it offers nothing new and nothing exceptional and this is what is needed if you want market share.
How has it failed so miserably?
Well if someone gave me 10’s of millions of dollars of marketing I could think of better ways of spending the money. I know they have truckloads of cash but really if you want to attract Internet users the campaign should have been directed at search engine users whilst they are online, not TV, print, radio and Buses/Bus Shelters.
Maybe this would not be as glamorous but it would have served the number one rule in advertising – advertise where your market is!
Another thing that is continually a problem for larger companies trying to get in on Google’s territory – the fact that Internet users love Google, it gives reasonably accurate results and gives them in quick time and does not ‘push’ advertising in the faces of Internet users.
The Yellow Pages directory is a complete dud, slow, advertiser centric (not user) . In fact I use the White Pages directory for looking up business and residential listings and stay away completely from Yellow pages if I can help it.
This poses another problem for Sensis, I cannot remember the last time I used the yellow pages directory (paper)for looking up a product or service – it is just too slow and painful a process. I understand that I am a heavy Internet user and not the norm but it has been at least 2 years since I have looked in the big yellow book. Yet prices for advertising continue to rise and once businesses wise up it is going to be a tough sell going forward.
The next edition I will be avoiding advertising in altogether. My market is completely online and that is where I will be placing my advertising dollars.
Sensis will not give up on the search market and nor should it, but they will need to get a hell of a lot smarter with their marketing and push more money into research and development.
In the meantime I will log onto Google again to do my search, just like over 70% of my Australian neighbours.
Click here to download the Sensis Press Release (July 2004 PDF File 10.5KB)
