As far as most advertisers are concerned, there are really only two pay per click search engines that deserve their attention - Google's AdWords and Overture (owned by Yahoo!). After all, these are the most popular search engines that dominate the industry in terms of traffic, technology, and popularity.
This also means that the competition for a position on these
search engines is fierce, which causes bid prices for many
keywords to go up, making it too costly for smaller players to
get into the game.
Fortunately, another category of PPC search engines, known as 2nd
Tier, exists. Don't let the name fool you - many of these search engines process in excess of billions
of searches per month and some are actual public companies or wholly owned subsidiaries
thereof, such as FindWhat,
ePilot,
Marchex (owner of GoClick),
and several others.
2nd Tier also includes search engines such as SearchFeed,
Enhance,
Kanoodle,
7Search,
PageSeeker,
Search123, and so on. While all of them
combined represent less user traffic that Google AdWords alone, you will find that you can actually get very
decent positions on a lot of them without spending an arm and a leg.
In general, you will find that if it takes you 20 clicks to get 1 sale on Google, it may take you 200 visitors
to get 1 sale on a minor search engine. However, since it all comes down to ROI,
you might wind up paying the same or even less per sale, as the bids are significantly lower on the 2nd Tier
engine where it took 200 clicks to make 1 sale.
There is a lot of controversy going on regarding the actual conversions that 2nd tier search engines
bring. A popular rumor is that they work with lower-quality traffic providers. In
reality, however, minor search engines actually do work with some
pretty great content websites. It just varies from industry to
industry. You may find that an advertiser selling web hosting may
have miserable results on a specific search engine, while another
advertiser selling flowers may get an excellent return on
investment.
Of course, it also has a lot to do with your skills as an ad
writer. After all, a skillfully crafted title and description can
make all the difference between a successful campaign and a
dismal failure.
My personal recommendation would be to definitely try as many
other search engine ads as you can afford to. With a minimum
commitment of just $25-$50 per search engine, you might just find
a new, highly cost effective source of traffic that you'd never
known about if you haven't tried this out. Secondly, make sure to
utilize the Customer Service these search engines offer. Many of
them will assign a specific Account Manager to help you get the
most out of the campaign. Talk to them and find out what works
and what doesn't, instead of guessing yourself.
About the Author:
Boris Mordkovich is the editor for a Pay Per
Click advertising resource site, PayPerClickUniverse.com. PPCU
offers articles, reviews, weekly blog, and more to help small businesses get the most out of Pay Per Click. Sign up
for a free, monthly newsletter and get $300 worth of PPC credits.
Please see our PPC search engine section for more articles, and information.