Today was another first for me, after the announcement of WebVisible closing their doors after a 10 year run, and the official announcement from their CEO posted on Tech Crunch.
Here’s part of the note sent to employees:
It is with deep sadness and regret that I must inform you that today, December 27, 2011 is the last day of operation for WebVisible. I know this is a shock and has come abruptly. Even with all our efforts to recover throughout this past year, we found ourselves in a position in which the debt load of the company was simply too much to overcome. Our bank foreclosed on its loan which means they are taking over the company’s assets and collecting all remaining payments. As a result they have forced the company to shut down….This happened quite suddenly, and the timing could not be more unfortunate…As of today there are no employees left at WebVisible, including myself and therefore there is no one to handle anything for you.. This is like a bad movie, I can’t imagine a worse scenario for shutting a company down and laying everyone off, the only concession I was able to get from the bank was to wait until after Christmas. As the CEO I apologize that I have not been able to do more to avoid this event and this timing.
We are still trying to get confirmation from the company, and will update when we hear back.
In an attempt to gather more information I did a search for the company name on Google, I was shocked with the paid results. I know shouldn’t be shocked, but if you look at the cost of the webvisible keyword today you might be shocked…Prices up to $9.54 a click, from the previous rate of 10 cents a click.
I have attached the SERP to this post for you to see just how aggressively other companies like Orange Soda, Netsertive, Hellogeo, visiture, and more are going after the Webvisible customers that were just left hanging in the wind.
If you are a business owner, or marketing professional that has been impacted by Webvisible shutting down, please don’t just jump to another company, spend your time doing research…don’t make an emergency buy.
If you are in need of transitioning your Search, Social, or Display campaigns please call Chris today at 720.427.3707 and I can help you through the process. I work for the largest provider of local paid search in the United States, a company that has more than 37,000 active customers, and has run more than 700,000 campaigns to date.