Featureds Listing Help and Guidelines

If you have questions regarding your ExactSeek Featured Listings, please consult the FAQ's below. If you have questions regarding the Rapid Paid Inclusion program, visit the RPI Help page. If you still have questions after reviewing the appropriate help and FAQ pages, please contact store@exactseek.com with your problem. To ensure a quick response regarding either program, please use a relevant subject and include the email address you submitted under, your URL, any error messages you encountered and a clear explanation of your problem.

Featured Listing FAQ

Q. What is a Featured Listing?
A. A Featured Listing is a paid listing where you pay a flat fee for an ad box that will appear in the right column of our search results.

Q. How long is my listing active for?
A. Your ad will remain active unless automatic renewal is cancelled, and you will be billed every 3 months or 1 year (depending on the term you selected at time of purchase).

Q. How much do I pay per click or impression?
A. There is no pay per click or impression charge, just the single flat fee per listing.

Q. How long does it take for my ad to be displayed?
A. Your ad will be added to our search results for the keyword phrase you selected within 6 to 8 hours.

Q. Why doesn't my ad show up every time I search my keyword phrase?
A. We limit the number of listings that can be purchased and rotate the listings that are displayed so that each ad is treated equally, and has an equal chance at appearing at the top of the featured listings. This means that your listing should appear a minimum of one out of every three searches on that keyword phrase.

Q. Is my ad displayed the same way on all search engines in the ExactSeek paid inclusion network?
A. No. On most engines, your ad will appear as a Google-type ad box in the right column of search results, but on some engines, it will appear as a Recommended Listing above regular search results or in the right or left columns of search result pages. Additionally on some of the directory sites your listing will only appear if your keyword phrase matches one of their directory categories.

Q. If I buy a Featured Listing for my website, will my listing also appear in the regular search results of ExactSeek and the other engines in the ExactSeek paid inclusion network?
A. No. Featured listings and regular listings are totally unrelated. For your website to appear in the regular search results of ExactSeek, or any of the search engines associated with ExactSeek, you need to submit to each engine separately. In most cases, submission is free.

Q. I've looked and still can't find my ad, where is it?
A. If you completed the submission of your ad and it is not being displayed in our search results after 8 hours for your selected keyword term, contact store@exactseek.com. Please provide us with the name and email address that you used to purchase your ad as well as your URL, the keyword phrase you selected and any order numbers we sent to you.

Q. Why do I see clicks to my ad in my ExactSeek member account even though my site analytics shows no traffic from ExactSeek?
A. Clicks to your ad{s} may come from any of the search engines in our network or from one of our major traffic partners who support our vision of a flat fee search engine advertising model.

Title and Description Guidelines

Please follow the guidelines below when selecting or modifying your Title, URL & Description choices:

1) Titles are limited to 30 characters, site Description to 100 characters and URL length to 255 characters. Character limits include spaces and punctuation. There are also limits on the number of uppercase letters that can be used.

If your destination URL link is too long for the URL form field, use a shortened version (such as your homepage URL) that is within the character limit.

2) Be concise, clear and accurate in describing your site. Your ad text and keywords should directly relate to your site content. Be sure to mention the business, product or service you wish to promote.

3) Avoid repetition, excessive capitalization and superlatives that are subjective in nature like "Top Rated", "Best Service", and "#1".

4) Be sure to check spelling and to use proper grammar and punctuation.

5) Your ad must NOT have offensive or inappropriate language.

6) ExactSeek does NOT accept Featured Ad listings that include content, services or products that are:

• Pornographic or containing Adult Content; This includes sites selling adult videos and/or sex toys
• Inflammatory, Offensive or Promoting Hate Literature;
• Illegal, or in violation of another person's, or company's, rights or trademarks

Keyword Selection Tips

The selection of your Keyword or Keyword Phrase is perhaps the most important step in the purchase of your ExactSeek Featured Listing and essential to your listing's performance. Please review the following tips and guidelines when selecting or modifying your keyword choices:

• Keyword Targeting: For best results, select a Keyword or Keyword Phrase that is related to your product or service.
• Correct Phrasing: Do NOT select meaningless keyword phrases.
  
  Acceptable: cheap dedicated web hosting
  Not Acceptable: hosting web dedicated cheap
• Exact Searches: Your Featured Listing will appear in ExactSeek's search results if searchers perform an exact search of your selected keyword or keyword phrase. For example, if you purchase the phrase "cheap web hosting", your listing will appear if that exact phrase is searched. It may also appear if terms like "cheap" or "web hosting" are searched, but only if those terms have not been sold out.
• Plurals and Case Sensitivity: Keywords and keyword phrases are not case sensitive so a search for 'Clip Art' is the same as 'clip art'. However, pluralized words such as 'webmaster' and 'webmasters' are treated as different key words.
• Non-Alpha Numeric Characters: In general, avoid the use of any non-alpha numeric characters in your keyword selection. Letters and numbers are fine. Do NOT use hyphens, periods, apostrophes, quotation marks, extra spaces, and other symbols (*, =, +, %, &, @, ") because they will prevent your listing from displaying.
  
  Acceptable: Online card games
  Not Acceptable: online, *card*, games
• Phrase Length: The selection of a single keyword for your listing will almost certainly ensure that your Featured Ad Box is more frequently seen in ExactSeek's search results. In general, the longer the keyword phrase, the less likely it is that it will be searched. However, most single keywords are too general to deliver targeted search traffic.
  
  Our recommendation is to select a well-considered two word, or at maximum, 3 word phrase. Recent studies have shown that more people are now using multiple word phrases when performing searches on the Net with the majority using two word phrases.
• Changes to Your Listing(s): The performance of your Featured Listing ad(s) will to a large degree be dependent on your choice of keywords and your ad content. Unlike Google, we do not penalize buyers for ads that perform poorly. We do, however, strongly suggest that you monitor your listing stats and make changes as necessary. In some cases, numerous changes may need to be made before your listings perform as expected.

Rolling Selection System

The ExactSeek 'Rolling Selection' System gives every listing the same chance of appearing in the Featured Listing section of the ExactSeek search results for the selected Keyword or Keyword Phrase.

By randomly selecting the Featured Listing that gets the top placement every time that keyword is searched, we create an even playing field for all Featured Listings that have selected that keyword. Since we limit the number of listings per keyword or keyword phrase to 30, your listing should appear on average as follows:

• Keyword Terms sold 10 or fewer times will be displayed every time that keyword term is searched.
• Keyword Terms sold between 11 and 20 times will be displayed on average one out of every two times that keyword term is searched.
• Keyword Terms sold between 21 and 30 times will be displayed on average one out of every three times that keyword term is searched.

Note: If you have selected a term that is sold out or almost sold out, your listing will be randomly displayed for every search of your keyword term. On average the number of times your listing is displayed should follow the outline noted above. However, this may not be apparent if you are running test searches to verify the randomization on ExactSeek alone.

Your selected keyword term(s) and listing(s) are randomly rotated across our entire network of search engines and may be appearing in the search results of these other engines even if they are not appearing in ExactSeek results.