Bigmouthmedia open up five years of search market history

Bigmouthmedia has just opened up five years of newsletter back issues and made them, as well as individual stories, available on their website. Just what did online advertising and SEO agencies want to tell their clients (and prospective clients) about the search market 5 years ago? There's now an easy way to find out.

The search landscape was significantly different in 2002, with Yahoo! still the biggest search provider - let’s remember that Google hadn’t even gone through an IPO at that stage and wouldn’t for another two years, never mind being the household name it is now. Different search marketing technologies also meant that agencies such as bigmouthmedia generally reported on different things, too.

Now, more than five years since the inception of the bigmouthmedia newsletter, the apocryphal vaults have been opened and every article and press release relating to the worlds of online marketing and search engine optimisation written by bigmouthmedia have been released in an archived online form.

Just a quick look through these newly available archives shows just how much things have changed - for instance, in 2002 bigmouthmedia mentioned the keyword Yahoo! 3 times in an article title and the keyword Google 0 times - compared to 2006, where the figures were 5 and 11 respectively - indicating just how far Google have pushed back the boundaries of search technology in the last five years.

In five years there have been:
- Over 200 newsletters
- 2,234 articles and newsletters which mention Google
- 1,500 articles and newsletters which mention Yahoo!
- 371 articles and newsletters which mention Overture
- 781 articles and newsletters which mention Microsoft
- 44 articles and newsletters which mention Bill Gates
- 303 articles and newsletters which mention Lycos
- 102 articles and newsletters which mention Click Fraud
- 236 articles and newsletters which mention China
- 18 articles and newsletters which mention the Apple Mac
- 17 articles and newsletters which mention the Nintendo Wii
- 24 articles and newsletters which mention Paris Hilton

Bigmouthmedia's newsletter archives clearly display how far things have moved on from the days where portals reigned supreme, AOL CDs dropped through letterboxes at the rate of 10 or more a day, and hundreds of spinning .gif logos and repeating background patterns of your dog on your GeoCities page were the last word in web design.

A quick delve into the dusty online archives from 2002 shows us that meta-based search engine Infospace had developed some paid inclusion for their sites, joining the (quite young service back in those days!) search engine advertising model which has continued to this day, Ah, the good old days, where men were men and people still remembered DOS commands.

It's certainly a good thing, then, that Google has come along with it’s increasing importance translating easily into news content brevity certainly counts for something, but perhaps it can be taken to extremes, such as when bigmouthmedia reported on the 8th birthday of venerable internet OAP Lycos. Everyone has learned their lesson, though, and even technical reporters tend to be just a tad more verbose in their writings nowadays.

The decision was made to make the bigmouthmedia newsletter archive public so that search engine and internet marketing writers around the world would be able to gain a clearer understanding of the rapidly changing historical trends in search marketing and search engine optimisation. .

Notes to Editor:

About bigmouthmedia
Bigmouthmedia, part of the Global Media Group is a leading digital marketing agency based in the UK, Mainland Europe, Asia and the USA. With over 300 clients across all sectors, ranging from SME’s to major global brands, bigmouthmedia offers a range of search marketing services leveraged to offer its clients maximum return for their online investment.

Founded in 1997 by Steve Leach and Heather Luscombe, the company currently has offices in Edinburgh, Manchester, London and New York, and counts among its clients British Airways, MTV, Barclays, Tesco and Hilton. Parent company Global Media has a further 7 offices around the world and clients including AOL, lastminute.com and ebay. Bigmouthmedia was named the AXA Small to Medium Business of the Year at the 2006 National Business Awards, with comments from the judges including: “Successful on a global scale. Impressive, knowledgeable” and “A real market leading service performed exceptionally well.”

Press Contact: Bigmouthmedia Ltd UK
Emily Thorpe
Marketing Manager
Bigmouthmedia
51 Timberbush
Leith
Edinburgh
EH6 6QH
Tel: (+44) 131 561 2179
Fax (+44) 131 553 6800
Email: emily.thorpe@bigmouthmedia.com
Web: http://www.bigmouthmedia.com/