front page article from digital magazine

Ansearch poised to
reveal new search Blinkx
ANSEARCH is to unveil a new look
search site in two weeks, featuring a
fully integrated video search engine
facility. Ansearch CEO David Burden
revealed to Digital Media that the
revitalised site will showcase the
Blinx search engine, which Ansearch
acquired exclusive local representational
advertising rights for in June.

Burden, who took the helm of
Ansearch in February with a carefully
chosen new board team in place,
said the re-launch was one of many
innovations that the streamlined and
re-focused search based marketing
company would be introducing over
the coming months.

The group has also soft launched a retail web
development play with its Perth
based subsidiary Webfi rm opening
its fi rst retail presence in Melbourne
in mid June. The arm is aggressively
targeting the web-challenged SME
sector of which Burden estimates
has an addressable market of around
734,000 and of which 50% are
without websites. The service offers
a fully functional and SEO enabled
site from consultation to delivery
in 12 weeks with price points from
basic packages of $2.5k -$5k and
advanced at $5- $25k.

The company has flagged a return
to profi tability in 2008/9 following
a 49% surge in revenue to $12.3
million for its unaudited accounts for
2007/8. Hitwise co-founder Andrew
Barlow, who became chairman of
Ansearch in October was instrumental
in bringing new blood to the board
including Burden, Hitwise co-founder
Adrian Giles and dotcom veteran
Adrian Vanzyl.

Burden has spent the
last fi ve months heavily restructuring,
slashing 20% of staff and shedding
non-core business projects in addition
to building his “dream” board and
executive team which he says will
future proof the business and its
expansive new directions.

Burden said that video properties
were emerging as a key plank to
the evolving search and advertising
market with clients constantly
lamenting the shortage of inventory
for video advertising.
“Video delivers the audience at the
point of peak engagement and makes
for highly effective, measurable
campaigns,” he said.

According to Hitwise Blinkx has
gained momentum from mid-May
2008 with Australian Internet users
increasing traffi c by 210% in share
of visits. Hitwise analyst Sandra
Hanchard said that there was a
16% increase in traffi c from search
engines to video sharing websites,
“is a very good indicator that online
video is gaining momentum and will
attract a mainstream audience in
Australia.”
She added that “we’re seeing
similar patterns in video search to
how social networks emerged into the
mainstream 2 to 3 years ago.”

Burden claimed that the new
look Ansearch would offer a
serious independent alternative to
the entrenched top 5 search players
in the Australian market. “There is a
space for an independent alternative
in the market,” he said adding the
partners were “getting over Google”
its dominance and its pricing
structure. He added that Ansearch
was also a far more nimble player
than its high ranking portal based
competitors. “The fi rst project I axed
at Ansearch was a portal development
site. Search does not need a
portal, it needs to be exact.”

Hitwise’s latest stats reveal no shift
in Google’s dominance as number
one search engine in Australia, with
almost nine out of ten searches
carried out through it. The results
from Hitwise Search Engine Analysis
for the four weeks ending 28 June
show 87.81% of all searches are
done through Google, an increase
of 11.79% compared to the same
period last year.
MSN Search and Yahoo! Search
engines each received 6.72%
and 3.93% respectively, while the
remaining 42 search engines included
by Hitwise, accounted for only 1.54%.


Good story and an interesting play for the team.