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Fate of MarketingSherpa SEO Buyer’s Guide Up in the Air
By Mike Murray | June 27, 2007
Just like last summer, this was supposed to be the time that MarketingSherpa would solicit new surveys for the upcoming Buyer’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization Firms (SEO).
But I don’t expect a request for our data anytime soon or a copy of the guide either.
I’ll leave it to the MarketingSherpa team to clarify (I have call into them). From what I can tell already, they may not publish the guide (at least not the SEO one in its current format).
I urge MarketingSherpa to announce its plans or at least acknowledge that there is no plan and that nothing has been ruled out.
I’m a huge fan of MarketingSherpa, an online researcher that focuses its publishing projects on case studies and benchmark marketing data. Last year, MarketingSherpa was sold to MarketingExperiments.com, which conducts real-time marketing campaign tests.
Obviously business goals and directions change, but I sure hope MarketingSherpa doesn’t discontinue the SEO guide or any other guide.
Critics are too tough on the buyer’s guides because much of the information is supplied by the consulting firms (which makes its accuracy somewhat suspect I guess). The data includes more than 100 firms for the SEO guide and 65 firms for the paid search guide.
But come on, MarketingSherpa isn’t doing anything out of line with the guides - not like assigning quality rankings based on biased data from the firms themselves.
If some numbers are off, including prices and staff sizes, I can live with that. The entire SEO guide, for example, provides any buyer with an incredible amount of information about price ranges, services offered in the industry (and to the degree they’re emphasized) and much more.
The guide has invaluable charts and insights about how search engine optimization firms operate and what to expect from them. The $149 price is very reasonable
What will the future hold for the SEO guide? It’s hard to tell, but it doesn’t look good so far. I hope a great product gets a new life - just like those on-their-way-out TV shows that survive when people speak up.
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June 28th, 2007 at 9:50 am
Mike, Thanks so much for your kind words about our Buyer’s Guides. We decided to discontinue the line of Buyer’s Guides this year because while the information was valuable, it wasn’t precisely what customers wanted. They wanted ConsumerReports style verified ratings of each firm’s performance. That’s an impossible task for a technical service industry. So, this year we’re retiring the line and considering ways to re-tool it so it’s useful to customers as possible while keeping the data true and real. PLUS, for data hounds, we’re broadening the scope of our annual Search Marketing Benchmark Guide (currently weighing in at more than 200 pages of stats) to include more firm info.
July 2nd, 2007 at 1:23 pm
No problem. You’ve done a terrific job and filled a key void in our field. I wish you continued success and look forward to what you turn out next.
July 5th, 2007 at 7:09 am
[...] Mike Murray questioned the future of Marketing Sherpa's SEO and SEO/SEM firms buyer’s guide, Anne [...]
July 6th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
Just what the SEO industry needed…less reputable info to further mystify the service. All this while paid search gets even more great support.
We need more trusted and authoritative data out there and everyone quotes MarketingSherpa.