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To: Bob Kim who wrote (130324)	8/20/2001 10:29:27 AM
From: 10K a day	Respond to of 164684

Yeah, I think he stayed at a Holiday Inn!

To: Bob Kim who wrote (130324)	8/20/2001 10:45:23 AM
From: H James Morris	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

Bob, does Blodget have a rating on GOTO? >August 17, 2001 12:00 AM ET GoTo.com (GOTO) may be the biggest secret pleasure among Web surfers since pornography. Its paid search listings are quite popular with users, despite a lot of hand-wringing among activists and competitors who say people often don't want to click on corrupted, sponsored links. The top brass at Google, for instance, are proud of the purity of their search engine, as their software ranks search results based on objective criteria. They like to point out that in many cases, as when cancer victims go searching for treatment options, it isn't right or even useful to put paid listings first. Just last month, the consumer advocacy group Commercial Alert, which was founded by Ralph Nader and receives advice from the former presidential contender, complained to the Federal Trade Commission that GoTo.com clients like Microsoft's (MSFT) MSN and CMGI's (CMGI) AltaVista do not clearly label their GoTo-powered-search results as paid advertisements. Wall Street, needless to say, has a different view. Ralph Nader "has gotta have something to do after the election, I guess," jokes Darren Chervitz, director of research for Jacob Asset Management. But Nader doesn't need to worry that typically skeptical Internet users are harmed by GoTo's listings, Chervitz said. "If you're looking for information, you probably want to use Google," said Chervitz. But, "a lot of the people running searches on the Internet are actually looking for goods" -- they looking for things, not data. GoTo dismisses Commercial Alert's complaint, as well, saying the average Internet surfer isn't concerned over whether their search results were bought. "The complaint assumes that consumers care that listings are labelled 'Paid,'" the company said in a statement. "However, our research shows that relevant results are what consumers care about; that is, whether or not they find what they're looking for." Indeed, Media Metrix ranks GoTo.com as the 24th most popular site on the Web among U.S. users, with around 11 million unique visitors in July. Google, in comparison, was No. 15, drawing about 15 million unique visitors. Meanwhile, the average GoTo.com user spent 5.1 minutes on the site, compared with 23.7 minutes for the average Google user. That could be because people simply run more of their searches on Google. But Jupiter Media Metrix analyst Marissa Gluck said in a recent research report that the scant amount of time people spend on GoTo, compared to the time they spend on Google and on the search sections of sites such as MSN and Yahoo, indicates that they are finding what they want more quickly on GoTo.com. Gluck also cited a study conducted by Jupiter and NPD Retail, which found that 28 percent of users find a product to buy online by going to a search engine and typing in the name of the product type. That was the No. 1 method for finding a product, ahead of going straight to an online store (23 percent) or going to a search engine's shopping channel (5 percent). "The paid search model succeeds precisely because consumers find relevant listings," Gluck wrote. Heading toward profits The model certainly seems to be working for GoTo.com. The company nearly tripled its year-over-year sales in the second quarter of 2001 to $63 million, up 20 percent from the first quarter. GoTo posted a net loss of just 6 cents per share, while Wall Street analysts were looking for a loss of 17 cents per share, according to Thomson Financial/First Call. (Three of the four analysts covering the company work for investment banks that underwrote GoTo's follow-on stock offering last month, however, so they might be expected to set a low performance bar.) GoTo actually made money in the second quarter before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization and said it plans to post an actual profit of 2 cents per share in the third quarter. In 2002, it plans to earn 31 cents per share.