Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Guide
In this guide you will learn:
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What is a Pay Per Click (PPC) search engine |
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Why is it a smart way to promote yourself on the web | |
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What advertisers need to be careful of | |
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What to look for in a search engine | |
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Insider Secrets - Tips and Tricks | |
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Top Ten PPCs Listed with short review of features | |
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Link to pay-per-click directory | |
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Long list of all other PPCs that exist (UK PPCs at end of list) |
What is a Pay Per Click search engine?
A Pay Per Click (also known as Pay Per Ranking, Pay Per Placement or Pay Per Position) search engine enables you to list your site at the top of the search engine results.
You pay only when a searcher or clicker (I use these terms interchangeably) clicks on your listing and connects to your site. You don’t pay to list, you only pay for clicks or click throughs.
You list your website by selecting keywords that refer to your product or service. For each keyword you determine how much you are willing to spend. The higher you bid the higher you will appear in the search results.
PPC search engines usually combine paid listings with unpaid listings to ensure any given search produces sufficient results. Typically, unpaid listings (also known in the industry as ‘fodder’) are provided by another search engine such as Inktomi, Google or the DMOZ project.
It’s a smart idea.
An account with a PPC search engine is a great way to drive targeted traffic to your site because you only pay for actual clicks to your site. It is risk free and a cheaper alternative to listing with the bigger search engines. Search engines like AltaVista, Yahoo and Google get lots of traffic but they are expensive. For example, with Google it will cost you $1500 for keywords per month with a three month minimum, so that’s $4500 with no clicks guaranteed.
But be careful….?
Advertisers need to be wary of PPC search engines that offer clickers money or incentives to click through their results. My advice is to steer clear of these search engines as the clicks you pay for are probably not genuine.
What to look for.
When choosing a PPC search engine consider its functionality as a search engine. Some of the PPC search engines fail to produce a useful search engine for a combination of reasons. They are either too slow, have distracting interfaces, poor navigational guides or just don’t have a set of results at all.
It is in your interests as an advertiser to sign up with a functional PPC search engine. Searchers won’t come back to a PPC if they can’t find what they are looking for.
Insider Secrets - Tips and Tricks
Many search terms can be very expensive. For instance, if you look at the cost on Overture for the search term "hosting", you will see that it will cost over $15.00 per click. However, by using the "search term" tool, we can bid on many other search terms for web hosting that cost as little as 5 cents.
The secret is not to get top bid on the expensive terms, but to get top bid on the cheap ones. Keep in mind that 20-30 search terms for 5-10 cents will get just as much traffic to your web site as one expensive term which has more searches per month. The main thing is to get in the top three bids for each search term so that you will get maximum exposure on all of the other search engines that are partnered with them.
By using the search tool, you will be able to find many search terms that are reasonably priced. For instance, at Overture, we bid on over 800 terms for web hosting at 6Star.net. Look for everything that relates to your web site and you will be surprised how many you will find. This same basic principle applies to all of the PPC search engines.
Top 10
pay per click search engines
The King of pay per click search engines, Overture has a well organized system. You can bid for rankings and also choose the description and title you want, which provides highly targeted traffic to your website. You can control your bids at all times and adjust them, based on the quality of your results. Especially handy is the Search Term Suggestion Tool, which shows you how often people search for a particular word or phrase.
Advertiser Tips and Tricks gives helpful tips from Overture's experts.
If you're in the top 10 at Overture, your link appears when someone searches using Dogpile meta search engine. If you're in the top six, you'll also appear in Metacrawler searches.
More people will click on your link if you use your key phrase in the title and in the description.
You'll probably receive more traffic from Overture than from all the other pay per click engines combined. However, because they are less popular, buying highly targeted traffic is much cheaper than at Overture.
The huge advantage of this kind of advertising is that you pay only when someone actually visits your site.
At FindWhat search engine, you bid on keywords or key phrases within search results. You pay only for click-throughs to your site. The minimum amount needed to start an account is $25.
In March 2000 FindWhat introduced new technology designed to read most simple plain English queries. You can buy search terms cheaper than at Overture. In May, 2000, FindWhat said that more than 10 million searches a day were being made at the search engine.
You can enter up to 1000 keywords at once. FindWhat reviews every keyword in their system and verifies its relevancy.
7Search results appear in over 35% of the top 150 search engines in English-speaking countries and Alexa shows it to have a significant amount of traffic compared to other pay per click search engines. Services offered to advertisers include immediate e-mail notification when you are outbid for the top ranking on a keyword, a keyword generator tool, and a 1:1 banner exchange program.
GoClick is a vastly improving pay per click search engine. It has received record increases in traffic and continues to upgrade the account area. It has some of the best tools available to help you manage your keywords and to help you to find more relevant terms.
Very professionally run and recommended.
Xuppa (formerly Bay9) still boasts a good amount of traffic according to Alexa. It has an affiliate program that pays 20% of referred account sign ups and will continue to pay 20% for 1 year. It also pays 20% of clicks on bidded listings.
Kanoodle has partnerships with sites such as, NetZero, DogPile, CNET, Metacrawler and Turbofind. You can choose whether you want to receive incentivized clicks to your listings or not. You can start an account with $25.
ePilot's results are displayed on partners' sites such as NetZero, DogPile and InfoSpace. ePilot's accounts area has undergone a major upgrade and is very easy to use. You can start an account with $100.
Ah-ha has just undergone a site re-design featuring a new and improved accounts area. You can participate in its LogoLink program by including a logo graphic next to your listing. Listing your site with Ah-ha will make your site visible to about 50% of the top 10 pay per click search engines. Ah-ha is about to launch a great new affiliate program. You can open an account for $25.
Search123 has great tools to help you control your pay per click advertising budget. You can set a spend limit by the hour, day, week or month. You can start an account with $25 and continue making deposits as little as $5.
For information on Search123's affiliate program, click here.
IQSeek is a well established search engine and has been developing its pay per click model for quite some time. Bidding starts at $0.01 and accounts may be opened for only $20. It has a good amount of traffic compared to most other pay per click search engines.
Espotting is a UK based pay per click search engine. Your top 5 listings appear on Yahoo! UK,Lycos and Hotbot UK and will reach 72% of the UK Internet population. It also allows you to target a German, French and or Spanish audience with Espotting across Europe. You can start an account for £99. (£10 of that is a service fee.)
- PPC
Directory - An alphabetical
list of PPCs with short reviews
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