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LinkExperts

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Estimated Value: $100 million

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Business: Helps advertisers and publishers get better visibility in search rankings through organic search engine optimization--primarily by adding paid links to prominent sites to boost a clients' perceived relevance.

Location: New York.

CEO: Seth Besmertnik

More Info: About LinkExperts

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Investors: Pequot Ventures

Analysis: Founded in 2004, LinkExperts helps clients improve organic search rankings by increasing perceived popularity--specifically, the number of publishers linking to the client's site. The services focuses on deep linking to specific pages within client sites rather than just macro domains.

Clients pay LinkExperts a flat subscription fee every month, along with per-link fees. LinkExperts then pays publishers to place links on their sites and splits the revenue with them. The NY-based company is growing rapidly and has many Fortune 1000 clients.

We like LinkExperts' focus on organic search results (as opposed to paid listings), and we think smart companies will continue to focus more attention and effort on this form of optimization. Our long-term concern is that LinkExperts pays sites to link to their clients' sites--a practice that seems at odds with the "more links means more authority" methodology of Google. LinkExperts works with high-quality clients, not link-spammers, and publishers approve every placement. Eliminating this form of paid placement is likely low on Google's priority list, but paid links, it seems to us, are paid links.

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We estimate that LinkExperts will generated about $15 million of revenue in 2008. We value the company at $100 million.

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