Search Engine Optimization News Blog

The last time a quarter went by without a company going public was 1978 - three decades ago! Has the market apathy reached such a level that nobody cares anymore? Even SEO isn’t giving new companies the confidence they need to take the plunge.

Or is it that going public isn’t as easy as it used to be? The Enron debacle gave rise to the Sarbanes-Oxley bill, which wiped out one trillion dollars of market capitalization when it was enacted in 2002. It is so expensive to comply with that many companies are going private or staying private to avoid coming under its jurisdiction.

The economy certainly doesn’t encourage companies to go public, though I would have thought I’d see more Mom and Pop French fry grease-powered vehicle manufacturers by now. Pesky road compliance laws!

Is it possible that the whole Icahn thing is what everyone is waiting to see resolved? Bated breath time ended two weeks ago, people - haven’t we realized that all points are moot? Microsoft has bailed, Yahoo’s in bed with Google. Stick a fork in it folks; it’s done!

Same with ‘the burst of the dot.com bubble’ - can we get over it, please? It’s the new day, and free commerce thrives on the internet, at least according to reports of ever increasing revenues. Sure the competition is fierce, did you think it was going to be a pristine wilderness forever? That’s what SEO is for.

Surely there is a market out there for something. Surely we still have investors willing to make the plunge and back an innovative new idea - don’t we? Or are we slowly grinding to a halt, and the market is just a warning sign?

Venture capitalists are starting to freak out, people, and that is NOT a good sign. Takes a lot to spook those guys.

What can be done? Some say that the folks in the Valley need to pay a little more attention to the real world of investments. C’mon, if those guys had wanted to ever grow up, they would BE the investors - isn’t the whole point of the Valley to be a maturity free zone, haven to YouTubers and Twitterers? No, not big money makers…but they’re COOL, man!

Others hold that this is just a temporary slump, caused by an uncertain market in the face of overseas conflict, a controversial Presidential race, and prices at the pump. New companies are just biding their time to see how the cards fall. Now is the time to start plugging SEO and plugging it hard - whather the market goes up or down you still need to be on the top!

Whatever the reason, there was only one major player this year in the $27 billion raised in public offering - Visa, at $18 billion.

That should tell you something!