A client of ours recently asked us the question that is the title of this post. Below is our answer.

How this method works is that people have to install external software, in this case a program called WebMenu, which is a search toolbar technology. The people who have these toolbar programs installed on their computer essentially make up the total reach of the advertising program. So if a certain company is selling you advertising space on their toolbar based network you need to know how many people are actually using the toolbar and not how many people have downloaded the toolbar. This is the MAXIMUM reach that your ad can reach. As an advertiser in this network you will show up ONLY in the people who have downloaded AND INSTALLED this toolbar into their browsers. Because many of these toolbar programs only work in certain browsers, the number of people actually using this will be a fraction of the total downloads. There are many other reasons why the number of toolbars in use will be much much less than the total downloads. So if a company claims that their toolbar has been downloaded 29 million times a very liberal guess would be that only 20% of these downloads actually are using the toolbar. We would guess it is probably more like 5% but this number is only going to be know by the company.

So if it is 10% then the total possible reach of your ad would 2.9 million people. Of course your ad would only show up when any of those 2.9 million people searched for your desired search term. Now in comparison you can advertise directly in the search engines like Google and Yahoo and have a total reach in the 100's of millions of people. So the key point is the cost-effectiveness. Just because it may cost $5.00 a click on Google for a very popular keyword does not make this more expensive than using a smaller company using a toolbar technology that circumvents the normal search engine positioning in your web browser. The old adage is that just because it is cheaper does not make it better ...... or in this case more cost-effective.

Another issue to consider is that many security programs will treat these toolbar programs as Spyware or Malware and may prevent the program from even working on someone's computer. These toolbars also have the potential to collect a lot of information from a person's computer and this is precisely why they are considered Spyware. That doesn't mean that these companies are doing anything illegal or unethical but they do have the keys to your computer so the potential for harm is there.

Here is the description of one of these such companies and this is in their own words right from their website.

Star Position is an authorized reseller of WebMenu, the world's most innovative search engine with Cluster Search Technology. WebMenu promotes itself through unique venues, including WebMenu's Cluster Search Toolbar which includes free anti-spyware and free Video/VoIP. This toolbar is at over 29 million downloads and growing daily. The WebMenu toolbar provides UNIQUE search functionality across GOOGLE, YAHOO and several other search engines. Try it for yourself by getting it at WebMenu or at one of WebMenu's partner sites.

Here is what Google themselves says about companies like StarPosition:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35291

# Some SEOs may try to sell you the ability to type keywords directly into the browser address bar.

Most such proposals require users to install extra software, and very few users do so. Evaluate such proposals with extreme care and be skeptical about the self-reported number of users who have downloaded the required applications.

Now clearly Google is not going to be a big fan as these toolbars are circumventing the positioning of the normal search engine rankings. Thus there is going to be an obvious bias from Google, however there have been some suggestions that Google might penalize searches and companies linked to those searches that use external software that circumvent the normal rankings of Google. You may not think this is fair but then again Google is a publicly traded company and they can do whatever they think is in the best interests of their shareholders. The last thing you want to do is hurt any of your current rankings in Google's own database so be very careful.

I asked around and a few other colleagues have tried these toolbar based advertising campaigns and the consensus was that for about $700.00 they got only a couple of visitors for keywords that were relevant to their clients. Considering the average pay-per-click Google account for our clients averages about $1 - 2.00 dollars of cost to you for every visitor you aren't going to beat this with $350 -700 a click using an advertising network that uses toolbar technology. If you haven't already maxed out your PPC programs on Google or Yahoo you would be crazy to try something that is over 100 fold less effective.

Lastly you always have to remember that any company can promise you traffic to your site. I myself could bring you thousands of clicks to your website just by writing a simple computer program. There would be no way to know that these visitors were not real and only an automated computer program. In fact we have even been approached by companies trying to sell us these types of programs. You would be very naive to think that there are not unscrupulous SEO companies that are using these types of techniques to artificially inflate the traffic that comes to their clients websites. That is why any company promising only traffic needs to be very carefully evaluated. What you want is conversions and visitors that turn into bookings or sales. This can only be determined using web analytics and business intelligence techniques which is precisely what we provide for all our clients so that they know what they are getting and they know that our services produce actual results and not just traffic.

Remember this is our humble expert opinion and I don't mean to suggest that any of the companies mentioned in this post are scam companies but I do think that the cost-effectiveness of these alternative methods of advertising always need to be carefully evaluated.

Kind regards,

SlickRockWeb Inc. a leading provider of affordable SEO services -- "Bringing you business one click at a time."