Topix.net Buys Topix.com

Posted on March 13, 2007

PaidContent.org reports that Topix.net, a popular blog and news search engine, has paid $1 million for the Topix.com domain. PaidContent.org says the companies is worried about the effect search engine influence may have once they move the site to Topix.com.

Topix.net, the news search site majority owned by Gannett, McClatchy and Tribune, has bought its .com domain after paying a Canadian company $1 million in January (late last year Topix received $15 million funding), and is planning to move the site onto Topix.com, reports WSJ. The story, which makes a bigger point about search engine influence on other sites, says it is worried about the effect on its Google rankings after this. About 50 percent of visits to Topix come through a search engine, and about 90 percent out of that is through Google...Even if traffic to Topix, which gets about 10 million visitors a month, dropped just 10 percent, that would essentially be a 10 percent loss in ad revenue, CEO Rick Skrenta said in the story. Topix will run its site at both Topix.net and Topix.com for awhile, in order to get over any unpredictabilities in Google and other search results.

Currently Topix.com does not have the news search features from Topix.net but it does have recent posts from Topix CEO Rich Skrenta's blog. It also a link to this WSJ article where Skrenta talks more about search engine influence.