Looking to narrow the gap in the pay-for-placement search engine space, New York-based FindWhat.com has snagged a deal to display search results on the Excite Network.

Under the agreement, FindWhat gets to display its pay-for-position search results on Excite.com and Webcrawler.com, two high-traffic sites owned by the Redwood City, CA-based Excite@Home.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

For FindWhat, which employs some 35 at its Manhattan headquarters, the deal is seen as a bold attempt to corner a share of the pay-for-placement market dominated by players like GoTo.com.

Specifically, the deal allows FindWhat to display four of its identifiable paid-for-position listings on search queries from Excite users. "Users who are looking to expand their number of search results will also be able to click on a link to try their search on FindWhat.com," the company said.

The company, spun off in 1999 by online marketers BeFirst.com, operates a Web marketplace where publishers use an automated bidding process to determine the per-click fee they will pay for placement on the search results returned.

It is styled as a "performance-based" advertising model used by online publishers to pay only for those customers who click through to their Web sites.