FindWhat.com looks to woo large portals

FindWhat.com, a provider of paid search results, said Monday that it will sell a new private-label service for large Internet portals, including its first customer, Terra Lycos. With the move, the Fort Myers, Fla.-based company is hoping to gain some ground against top rivals in the commercial search-listings business, Overture and Google, which give advertisers the opportunity to bid for placement in relevant search queries. FindWhat.com, which also licenses for-fee results to such companies as Excite and Webcrawler, will now allow major Web portals to brand their own listing service using its back-end technology and tap their own sales forces to cross-sell search marketing with online advertising.

"Top tier portals have a vested interest in serving and expanding their own advertiser base and may suffer when they have to direct a potential advertiser to a third-party provider for this particular service," FindWhat.com CEO Craig Pisaris-Henderson said in a statement.