Google launched AdWords in October 2000, letting advertisers bid on keywords and pay only when someone clicked. The model wasn't new: Bill Gross had already built it two years earlier at GoTo.com, auctioning search placement to the highest bidder, and that pay-per-click auction is quickly becoming the model the rest of the search industry builds on.
4 Professionals
Worth Knowing This Year
- 01
Founder, GoTo.com (later Overture)
Built the pay-per-click, keyword-auction model at GoTo.com in 1998 — the same model Google's just-launched AdWords is now borrowing.
GoTo.com's auction format is already becoming the commercial backbone of search advertising, well before "PPC" was a term marketers used casually.
- 02
Co-founder, Didit
Co-founded Didit in 1996, one of the first agencies built specifically around search engine marketing, years before Google existed.
Didit's early focus on search-only client work is setting a template for what a business built entirely around search marketing can look like, now that pay-per-click auctions are giving the discipline a real business model to sell.
- 03
Founder, iProspect
Founded iProspect in 1996 as the first SEM-only firm in the US and wrote some of the earliest books on search engine positioning.
His early writing helped turn search engine positioning from a technical curiosity into a service businesses were willing to pay an agency for.
- 04
Founder, Search Engine Watch
Had been running Search Engine Watch since 1996, tracking the search industry before "search marketing" was a recognized job title.
His coverage gave the fledgling industry a shared vocabulary and a place to follow how engines like AltaVista, Yahoo, and the newly prominent Google actually ranked pages.
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