Jim: "Because it's considered a new submission. We're not able to put enough resources against it yet."

Question: So in future, we'll have ability to swap out URLs?

Jim: "We'll see, but I hear you. We are aware of Inktomi's program."

Question: What's difference in traffic between premium listings and "regular" search results?

Jim: "Do you mean between Premier Listings (Featured Sponsor) and Paid Inclusion? There are two differences: 1) You are guaranteed that your listing will show up; 2) You are guaranteed that it will show up in a specific location on our page."

Question: Are Premier Listings twice as likely to be clicked on, for example?

Jim: "Premier Listing is really just an ad. With Paid Inclusion, you aren't paying for anything other than being included in index and then being subjected to same relevance algorithms that give us our other results, but with other benefits that I mentioned earlier.

"In terms of click ratio, I suppose it depends on how relevant your site is to a given query. The match rate of a site that buys ad space on our site is much more significant than one that purchases via paid inclusion for now."

For more information about Premier Listings, visit: http://static.wc.ask.com/docs/advertise/premier.html.

Question: Let's say that I have a Web site: http://myownwebsite.com, and let's say that my goal is for it to become an "authoritative" site in Teoma. Could you give us some tips on what we can do to try to be considered by Teoma as an authoritative or expert site on a particular subject?

Jim: "Our recommendations are as follows: 1) you allow people to link to you; 2) you offer quality content so that you become popular among other sites of same subject (i.e., experts). Basically, that's it. None of our expert sites or authorities are manually decided. It's based on our algorithms."

Question: On Teoma, are Teoma and Ask Jeeves results combined?

Jim: "Well, there really is no such thing as an Ask Jeeves result. There are pre-fab, editorially selected `answers' to certain queries that may appear at top of page if we have a high level of confidence that we have right answer. But as far as actual search results go, it's all Teoma...and we'll layer in Direct Hit click-pop at some point soon."

Question: But Teoma results ARE being shown at Ask Jeeves?

Jim: "That's exactly right. The part of AJ page that says, `You may find these search results helpful' has Teoma results. They were launched in January (and by no coincidence, we immediately saw a 30% increase in picks to those results.)"

After all, in any marketing campaign, true bottom line should be your ROI, return on your investment. That's how you'll know if your marketing efforts are really working, or if you need to go back to drawing board and try something new.

Recently, I was introduced to a new ROI calculating service called KeywordTool. It covers both pay-per-click engines and regular engine results.

To write article, I interviewed Chris Genge of KeywordTool (http://www.keywordtool.net), and he took me on a tour of service itself.

Question: Please explain what KeywordTool is and what it really does.

Chris: "Deciding which keywords best suit each Web site and which ones specifically will generate sales/conversions is perhaps toughest job in SEO. Tools like Word Tracker are a great help in narrowing down keyword selection, but then what?

"In past, decisions were not based on facts but mostly speculation. This gave people no alternative but to promote or bid on larger keyword groups. We used a shotgun approach in hopes of increasing sales, with no way of telling which keywords were adding to our bottom line!

"A common saying in advertising is: `In any good campaign, 50% of all advertising dollars are wasted, but which 50%?' KeywordTool can answer this question for keyword promotion campaigns.

"KeywordTool's tracking service tracks conversion or sales performance of keywords on search and pay- per-click engines, showing which keyword phrases are actually converting into customers and from which search engines. It is not a visitor tracker; instead, it determines keyword performance.

"With this keyword referral/conversion rate information, one can then fine tune their keyword choices and streamline promotion and bidding expenses to increase efficiency, sales, and profits, or in other words...the bottom line.

"KeywordTool is an online service that gathers information about your Web site referrals and sales/conversions. Using your private user name and password, you can then access stats so you can review information and make informed decisions about how to continue your online promotion.

"KeywordTool is designed for use with SEO and Pay-Per- Click (PPC) campaigns. It's well suited for both."

Question: Is there a way that we can see a demo of how service really works?

Chris: "Go to http://www.keywordtool.net At top of page, you will see log in. Use username of "keywordtool" and password of "demo" to access demo.

"The first page is list of search engines that have sent referrals to specific Web site you wish to have monitored. Only search engines that have sent a referral will appear on listed sites. New search engines will appear as referrals are sent.

"The `Create details' or `Edit details' in first column is where you would click to configure your search engine settings. This is where you tell KeywordTool what your average cost per click is for each search engine you want to calculate. This can be filled out after some data has been gathered.

"The search engine column is list of only those search engines that have referred visitors to your Web site. You will notice that KeywordTool will also differentiate between regions for those search engines that are regionalized.