ISPs Rebel, Shift Portal Links

Independent ISPs are banding together to abandon links with major portals that provide free dial-up services. Owners reveal how they keep their fee-paying subscribers happy with the change.

by Jim Wagner of internetnews.com [November 30, 2000]

A growing number of independent Internet service providers in the U.S. are mad as hell and they're not going to take it anymore. What's got independent ISP owners peeved? Major portals that callously offer free dial-up services to viewers.

Each month ISP owners routinely channel millions of page views to the major portals like Yahoo!, AltaVista, and Lycos from their collective start-up pages. What independent operators discovered, is that the links are a one-way ticket to losing their dial-up subscribers.

Naught quid pro quo
While many ISP owners continue to place prominent links to these portals in order to give customer's convenient access to well-known search engines and directories, more and more independent ISPs are choosing to cut their Web ties to portals that lure subscribers away from their fold.

Furthermore, some ISP owners believe that the major portal operators should be paying them for the traffic they bring to the Web destinations.

Walt Carter, President of Missouri-based ISP TeleSouth, said until recently he had heedlessly linked his ISP's home page to popular portal sites pitching free dial-up services.

"It's something I've observed for a while now," Carter said. "I was recently looking through a friend's Web site and saw the link going to one of the portal sites. And I thought—those sites offer free Internet service. I wonder how many customers they're taking away from us? I wonder how many they've taken from me?"

Carter added that the big portal firms have no problems taking customers from his Internet service business, without giving much in return.

"They're well-financed by Wall Street and it doesn't mean anything for them to offer free services that take away our customer base," Carter said.

Ostracize and survive
What Carter, and an increasing group of ISP business leaders are proposing, is an outright "link-boycott" of portals that offer free dial-up services. The list of banned portals currently includes Yahoo!, AltaVista, Lycos, Excite, Dogpile, and FASTSearch.

What effect a link-boycott could have on the major portals is unknown. Representatives from Yahoo!, Lycos, and AltaVista would not comment on the issue, but the math is relatively simple.

For example, let's assume an independent ISP receives 100,000 pages views each month from a subscriber base of 5,000 clients. Assuming that half of the independent ISP's subscribers want to surf the Web, while half log-on for e-mail, approximately 50,000 page views could be generated for portals offering free dial-up services.

Now that's just one ISP—extrapolate the example by multiplying 50,000 page views by 5,000 independent ISP operators. Small Internet services could be collectively channeling more than 250 million users to the major portals each month. Translate that into advertising dollars for the portals, based on CPM of $100 US, and Independent ISPs are collectively providing portals with potentially $25 million a month.

Congeniality awards
Fortunately for ISP owners, not all portals are created equally. Several well-known, popular portals don't dabble in dial-up services. These portals do what an entranceway to the Internet should do, provide helpful directories and organize Web content.

ISP-friendly portals include Ask Jeeves, Northern Light, Google, Go.com, Goto.com , and Switchboard.

Evolving revolution
So what's stopping independent ISP owners from joining the link-boycott? Two words—customer service.

Independent ISP owners built their businesses from the ground, up—building a business around delivering valuable services to their customers. Unfortunately for a lot of new Netizens, portals like Yahoo!, Lycos, and AltaVista are some of the few familiar Web destinations they recognize in a sea swirling URLs. So how can independent ISP owners substantiate eliminating one-click access to major Web portals with free dial-up offerings? Many Internet service operators say the answer lies in serving their subscribers better and educating their customers.

Speechcraft and spin
Several independent ISP owners participating in the link-boycott have taken the time to explain to their customers why they removed one-click access to the portals. Helpdesk personnel responding to customer complaints simply explain that links were removed because the portals offered rival services. Next, technical support takes their subscribers on a tour of the ISP-friendly search and directory Web destinations.

Allen Jenkins, of NetWest Online in West Texas, said most customers say they understand why the Internet service owner severed links with free dial-up hawking portals.

"If you look at our home page (type in 79762 for the zip code), you can see that we make it easy for our customers to search directly from the main page by giving an option to several engines," Jenkins said. "Most of the complaints have come from customers that do not fully understand how the Internet and drop-down boxes work. After we explained how they can still get to Yahoo!, etc., they seem to be fine."

Jenkins said he's had few customers complain about the adjustment in Web destinations, and that it would take a many more customer complaints to get him to re-establish those links to his Internet service.

Home page improvement
Many independent ISP owners don't have the capital necessary to create a vast portal with search functions and content management. But there are some search-facilitating firms that are willing to help ISPs build a powerful home page in exchange for their customers' page views.

TeleSouth's Carter has been using LookSmart's Portalmaker solution for his Internet service's home page. Carter said LookSmart has been a great company with which to do business.

"For every portal out there trying to get a free lunch from ISPs, there are two or three out there that won't take advantage of you and will pay you for the traffic you bring," Carter said. "We've been using LookSmart, they pay us for the traffic we bring them, and we have been getting a very fair payment for the service."

Granted, LookSmart requires that the ISP's Web site position a banner ad on top of each page in exchange for the portal building service, but Carter said it's still a great deal because LookSmart also offers localized Web content for his customers.

Other search engine-based portals are offering affiliation deals with ISPs as an extra incentive to drop their links to rival portals. Google, Go.com and Switchboard offer ISP owners a pay-for-traffic service, giving the independent business operators one-to five-cents for every search sent their way.

While it's unclear if the independent ISP link-boycott of major portals providing free dial-up services will have an impact on Nielson Ratings for Yahoo!, AltaVista, or Lycos—it's crystal clear there are many options available for independent ISP operators to stop sending business to free access providers.

Most ISP owners would never permit a rival service to lure away customers by placing a link on their home page, so why should the same Internet service permit portals to do so?

Telesouth's Carter said free dial-up providers have been eroding independent ISP's pool of paying customers for years. He said it's time to stop making it easy for portals to steal hard-earned customers away from independent ISPs.

"The Internet's grown up from a cottage industry, starting with small ISPs who have put a lot of effort into getting their business up and running," Carter said. "These are good people, and they're getting edged out by big companies that couldn't care less about stealing subscribers. It's time to put an end to the bloodletting."

—End