Publishers, do you want people to find and go to your site without having to look up related terms on Google (or Bing)? Well, Matt Kinsman of FOLIO magazine has reported on a new service, MashLogic, that allows searchers to find your site through related topics or terms without going through Google or Bing.
Matt reports: While the debate over “Google: Friend or Foe” continues with magazine and online content publishers, a new service from MashLogic offers publishers a way to keep readers at their sites without having to look up related topics on Google or Bing.
MashLogic has developed two semantic tools, “2Stay” and “2Go,” that identify and link to related topics and terms. “If you’re interested in a certain topic like sports or music, this would automatically identify links to those topics like players and teams or performers,” said CEO Ranjit Padmanabhan.”
The service is customizable for the host site. On Goal.com, a soccer-dedicated site and early MashLogic client, a series of red dots are visible under linkable terms which take the reader to other contextually relevant articles at the site. MashLogic is currently on 14 of Goal’s international language sites and in front of approximately 10 million monthly uniques. “This offers the ability to expose the reader to additional content,” said vice president of business development John Bryan. “There is a great degree of positive churn with stories and we’re making older content relevant by bringing it in front of the user. This also reinforces the relevance of your brand to the user and can increasing page clickthrough and time on site, which leads to higher CPMs and advertiser satisfaction.”
Bryan said the tool has particular appeal for publishers in three areas: fast-moving news, celebrity stories and sports. Past articles can be presented in a vertical timeline or horizontally across different categories. In a demo for the NewYorkTimes.com, the term “Meryl Streep” on the home page generated 10 related stories in the past seven days that had been on the site across blogs, movie reviews, fashion, finance and celebrity.
The minimum requirement for a publisher is to have an RSS feed which they can turn over to MashLogic for indexing, as well as implementation of a few lines of java script. Publishers can also restrict certain terms (such as the name of a competitive site).
"We have found MashLogic to be a valuable tool in both retaining users on Goal.com and encouraging them to return to the site for access to related content,” said Ron Elwell, president and COO of Goal.com. "We generate upwards of 60,000 articles each month, and MashLogic encourages our visitors to read and engage more with them. It also diverts users back towards Goal.com in coordination with our content, and the tool is in line with our aim of equipping each user with the functionality to seek out information."
Free To Publishers (With an Eye on Revenue Sharing)
MashLogic is currently free to publishers and is looking at developing a revenue share model on product links to sites such as iTunes and Amazon, as well as product sales (such as a soccer jersey) on sites like Goal.com.
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