Guide to PPC Advertising & SEM

Overture is now known as Yahoo! Search Marketing
Yahoo! Search Marketing is considered to be the King of the pay per click advertising and it was the first search engine to implement a pay-per-click model in their search results. Hitherto known as Overture, it started as GoTo.com and now is called Yahoo! Search Marketing.

It was founded in September 1997 and in June 1998 started its Pay-For-Performance search service to allow advertisers to bid for search result positions on specific keywords. In 2000, Got-To.com became Overture and on October 7 2003 it was acquired by Yahoo!, Inc. and is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Yahoo! Recently, Yahoo gave it a common brand name, Yahoo! Search Marketing. Overture reigns supreme because of its powerful relationship with other search engine results.

	Overture reaches 80 per cent of the active internet users and is considered to be one of the pioneers of the PPC advertising by starting on the concept in 1997.
	Advertisers receive over 170 million highly targeted sales leads each month.
	You need $25 deposited into the account and that will be applied towards click charges. A non-refundable initial deposit of $50 applies.
	Each account has a $20 minimum monthly spend.
	Minimum bid per keyword listing is $0.10.
	Sellers of certain legally restricted products may require certification at extra cost. Search listings are subject to editorial review.
	Distribution partners are MSN, Yahoo!, Lycos, AltaVista, InfoSpace, Netscape, CNET and Netzero.

Google’s Adwords

Google’s Adwords is part of the renowned Google and along with Yahoo ! Search Engine (Overture) occupies prominent position among PPC Search Engines. Although, it entered the fray a little later than Overture but it lost no time in becoming a major player. In recent times, it has given Overture a stiff competition and a run for its money.

	An estimated 200 million searches a day.
	The google network reaches more than 80 per cent of internet users.
	Minimum amount deposited to open an account $5 and minimum bid per keyword listing is $0.05.
	Rank is determined by combination of Cost Per Click (CPC) and click through rate (CTR)
	Distribution partners are AOL, Netscape, About.com, Ask Jeeves, America Online, Earthlink, Netscape, Compuserve, AT&T Worldnet and NYTimes.com.
	Google allows you to set a daily budget and you can control the amount you want to spend on your campaign each day. No minimum budget is required.
	AdWords provide the tool to target ads to prospective customers by city, region, or geographical area. Ads will appear to local prospects based on either their IP address or local information that may be included in their search.
	Advertisements can be targeted to over 225 countries and provide support in more than 30 languages.
	Businesses can pay for AdWords in more than 40 currencies.
	Google has easy to learn tools.
	Google offers excellent reporting capabilities to help track your PPC campaigns

MIVA (Findwhat)

MIVA is the new name for the FindWhat.com Group. MIVA brings together FindWhat.com, Espotting Media, Miva Corporation, Comet Systems and B&B Advertising. MIVA might not be as big as Yahoo! Search Engine and Google’s Adwords, but if you want to keep your expenses low and get good traffic, MIVA is worth considering. The major advantage with MIVA is that it has a vast distribution network. It has distribution partner network of hundreds of high-traffic websites—including large search engines such as CNET’s Search.com, Excite, Webcrawler, MetaCrawler, Dogpile and Microsoft Internet Explorer Autosearch. Last year, it had a merger with Europe’s Espotting that gives it a good presence in Europe

	Minimum bid for keyword listing is $0.05.
	Minimum initial sign-up amount to open an account is $25.
	MIVA has partnership with specialty sites, serving niche markets in order to drive the most targeted traffic to your website. In fact, each day on the MIVA.com network there are tens of millions of searches initiated by Internet users.
	Auto bid option that optimizes your keyword bids to deliver traffic for the lowest prices possible.
	Conversion tracking tool Ad Analyzer helps you in determining the effective keywords and ads, and the actual ROI.
	Through Campaign Scheduler you can schedule your campaigns in advance.
	Auto Replenish option ensures that you receive uninterrupted traffic to your website.
	Great customer support and live chat support.

Searchfeed.com

Searchfeed is good for business houses that want to use PPC but at the same time want to keep expenses low. It generates lots of traffic at low costs. SearchFeed provides its listing across a wide variety of web sites. It gets more than 360 million searches monthly from thousands of pre-screened partner web sites. It has easy to use campaign management tools and automatic bid option save time by raising bids to a chosen rank.

	Initial deposit $25.
	Minimum bid values are set at $0.01 per keyword.
	No monthly spending rule
	Searchfeed.com offers unique campaigns for advertisers of all types and sizes.
	Opening an account is quick and easy with no sign up fee.
	You can create unlimited listings and keywords.
	Advanced click tracking tools provide insight into click patterns and visitor trends.
	Searchfeed provides good tools to measure the performance of keywords, ROI, and a total campaign spending.
	Bid prices are relatively low on highly competitive terms.

Enhance Interactive (formerly called Ah-Ha)

	Enhance Interactive's partner network receives more than one billion queries each month
	Enhance Interactive online signup tool allows you to see exactly how much it costs to advertise in first, second, or third place on any given keyword or phrase, and displays your related keywords and projected numbers of searches and clicks, as well as the estimated cost of advertising.
	Minimum initial deposit to open an account is $50
	Minimum bid per keyword listing is $0.03
	Enhance Interactive's partner network displays ads on many popular sites, such as EarthLink, InfoSpace and MSN.
	The LogoLink™ tool allows you to place an 80 x 40 image next to your advertisement. It costs $9.95 per month for all such listings.

Findology

	Minimum initial deposit to open an account is $25
	Minimum bid per keyword listing is $0.01
	Offers Fixed or Automatic Payment Methods
	Simple-to-read traffic reporting
	Offers Auto and Fixed Bidding Options
	You can submit multiple sites on category base
	Offers Keyword Stats Reports

Kanoodle

	Kanoodle provides advertisers an unparalleled opportunity to leverage text-based, cost-per-click sponsored links to reach their customers on the Web's search engines and content destinations.
	Minimum initial deposit to open an account is $50
	Minimum bid per keyword listing is $0.05
	Distribution partners: CNET, Dogpile, Metacrawler, Webcrawler and Galaxy.com

Kanoodle's Services

	KeywordTarget™ for search-targeted sponsored links,
	ContextTarget™ for content-targeted sponsored links and
	BehaviorTarget™ for behavioral-targeted sponsored links -- are distributed on networks of high quality search and content providers, including CBS MarketWatch.com, MSNBC.com, USATODAY.com, CNET's Search.com, the InfoSpace search properties and on Kanoodle.com. Kanoodle was founded in 1999 and has offices in Amherst, NY and New York City.

Search 123

	Search123 has been providing online marketers with access to high-quality commercial search traffic, free account management and optimization services, and industry-leading online tools to assist advertisers and agencies in achieving their critical return-on-investment (ROI) and other performance metrics.
	Set-up your account and fund with at least $25 and minimum bid is $0.05 per click.
	No minimum monthly spending requirements, and free account management services.
	They continuously monitor searches and clicks from each of their partners using their proprietary technology and internal human review processes.
	Search 123 does not charge advertisers for clicks that do not meet their quality standards.

epilot.com

	ePilot is a leading pay-per-click advertising service that allows advertisers to list their web site within distributed search results across the Internet. ePilot has been in operation since March of 1999, making it one of the most established pay-per-click advertising services available.
	Minimum initial deposit to open an account is $100
	Minimum bid per keyword listings is $0.01.
	To be displayed on distribution network, bid prices is $0.07 or greater.
	epilot search distribution networks puts you on over 200 top search partners. Major distribution partners are : YellowPages.com, Index.com, Fitness.com, Pageseeker.com
	ePilot brings you value with lower bid prices for top keyword positions that are often twice the cost or more elsewhere.

goClick.com

	goClick.com receives over 7.2 billion targeted searches a year!
	New users can open an account for as little as $10.
	The minimum bid per click is $0.01
	There are no start-up fees and no monthly costs or minimum spending amounts. The only requirement is that your account should be funded all the time for you to receive traffic. Your account will stay active until you have used up all of your deposited funds.
	goClick has partnerships with over 60 search networks. Together these sites deliver nearly 350 million searches a month to their listings.

Google’s Adwords

Google is the largest and the most popular search engines online and its Pay Per Click service is known as Adwords. Adwords along with Yahoo search marketing (formerly known as Overture) are the first rung and the most prominent PPC search engines. Adwords PPC ads appear along side or above the results on Google.com search results pages and it claims that its network reaches more than 80 percent of internet users.

Adwords provide easy to use interface to create ads and it has inbuilt keyword tool to search relevant keywords for your website’s campaign. It gives you real time reports on number of clicks, average cost per click, total cost, conversion rate, conversion cost.

The minimum deposit required for Google’s Adwords is $ 5 and the minimum bid amount is 0.1 cents. Adwords charges you only a cent more than the second-highest bidder and unlike Yahoo! Search Marketing, it does not have a compulsory minimum spend.

The position on Adwords depends on the number of clicks received and on the Quality Score. It is the latest change made by Adwords to improve keywords performance and position. Now ad position on Adwords depends on the maximum bid amount and quality score. According to its website, “the higher the Quality Score, the lower the CPC required to trigger ads, and vice versa.” The other change made is regarding making keywords active or inactive depending on its performance, rather than changing it from normal to trial, on hold and disabled status.

It provides the option of regional and customized targeting that helps advertisers who want to reach customers in specific geographic areas. Site-targeted campaign option is the latest offering of Google’s AdWords. It allows advertisers to choose individual sites in the Google’s content network where they would like their ads to appear. Site targeted campaigns give advertisers the flexibility of choosing their target customers, big or small.

It provides its listing to the major websites, America online, Netscape, Earthlink, Compuserve, shopping.com, AT&T Worldnet, thus driving quality traffic to the website.

Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly called Overture)

Yahoo! Search Marketing is the most prominent Pay Per Click (PPC search engines) and is often called the father of PPC search engines. It claims to have a user reach of 80 percent and has a wide website partners to which it provides its sponsored listings, like MSN, AltaVista, CNN, InfoSpace, and ESPN. Overture’s ads generate highly targeted traffic, and generate leads.

The minimum initial deposit is $50 and its minimum bid amount is 0.10 cents per keyword. It charges you only one cent higher than the second highest bidder. Yahoo! Search Marketing requires a minimum spend of $20 on click throughs, otherwise your campaign’s ads will be paused.

It has easy to use tools to submit keywords, create ads, and place bid amount on keywords. It also provides conversion-tracking code to track conversions through keywords and ads. Yahoo Search Marketing has great tutorial content to make you proficient in handling their campaign management tools. It provides real time reports on number of clicks, total cost, number of conversions, average cost per click, and other related information.

It requires each keyword to have a minimum number of click-through rate, if it falls short of the click index, that particular keyword’s listing will be removed from search results. However, they may be allowed back online if changes are made in the ad to improve performance of that listing.

Miva (formerly called Findwhat)

Miva is an effective PPC search engine for businesses who want to keep their expenses low but at the same time want quality traffic. It is one of the prominent second rung search engines, which generates quality traffic. It provides sponsored listings to CNET's Search.com, Excite, Webcrawler, NBCi, MetaCrawler, Dogpile, and Go2Net . Because of its quality network partnerships, it drives quality traffic to the web site.

You can open an account on Miva by depositing an initial sum of $25 and the minimum bid amount is 0.05 cents. It offers easy to use tools to create ads and submit relevant keywords. Miva provides conversion-tracking tool, Ad analyzer, to identify the keyword and ads that are giving the best conversions. It provides Intellimap option, a keyword mapping system that maps together keywords that are essentially the same. You can also schedule your campaigns in advance.

Though MIVA's Auto Bid™ feature you get the best position possible for your keyword ads without exceeding your budget and you spend only one cent more than the next bidder. Miva has a good customer and live chat support, where your queries are answered instantly.

Searchfeed

Searchfeed is the best PPC search engines for those advertisers, who want to drive quality traffic to their website but also want to keep expenses at the minimum level. Its minimum bid amount of 0.01 cents is the lowest among the second rung PPC search engines. Searchfeed has easy options to submit keywords and create ads. . It provides the option of mass keyword submission with Bulk File Upload.

It offers real time reports to analyze, the number of clicks received for a keyword, average cost per click and total cost. Unlike Google’s adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing (Overture) and Miva, it does not have the conversion tracking tool. You have to rely on third party analytics to see which keywords are giving conversions

There are presently more than 8,000 websites integrated with SearchFeed and they claim to receive traffic of more than 360 million searches per month.

Findology

Findology is fast becoming one of the major second rung search engines. It claims to generate 2 billion searches per month.

You can open an account on Findology by depositing a minimum amount of $25, and the minimum bid amount is 0.03 cents. The minimum bid amount is comparably lower than other search engines and you can bid on highly competitive keywords for lesser amount compared to other search engines.

All listings on Findology are sponsored listings and it has partnerships with web sites that generally are not partnered with other search engines. It helps in providing advertisers with quality traffic at minimum bid amounts, with the potential of a higher ROI.

Its interface and keyword submission option is quite similar to Google’s Adwords. It provides the option of auto and fixed bidding, traffic reporting and submission of multiple sites.

Enhance

Initially called as ah-ha.com, Enhance Interactive is based in Provo, Utah. It was founded in 1999, and is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Marchex, Inc. of Seattle, Washington. You can open an account on enhance by depositing a minimum amount of $50, minimum bid on keyword is 0.03.

Keyword Matching System allows you to choose from three enhanced keyword-matching capabilities, Basic Match, Phrase Match and Broad Match, and apply Negative Match to filter out traffic from specific unwanted keywords. It also provides the tool of AccuMatch, it automatically adds to the keywords to include misspellings, plurals, and other phrases. At $9.95 per month for all listings, you can place an 80 x 40 image next to your advertisement; it helps in differentiating advertisement, and projecting brand names.

It also offers a LivePerson solution, a tool on the Web site that allows clients or prospective clients to instant message a representative during business hours. It has partnership with Dogpile, Excite, MSN, NetZero, and others and claims to have around 1.5 billion searches per month.

Search 123

Search123 is fast becoming one of the best second rung search engine, after it was acquired by Valuelcick, inc. in June 2003. You can open an account on Search123 by depositing a minimum amount of $50 and the minimum bid amount per keyword is 0.05 cents.

It gives its listings to hundreds of websites, directories, and search engines and claims to provide millions of qualified clicks to the advertiser. It states that its PPC search engine provides an incremental source of lower cost, high-quality traffic that allows advertisers to improve their return on investment (ROI) through Pay Per Click advertisement.

Search 123’s customizable “dashboard” allows advertisers to view and manage the whole campaign from either the keyword view or the listing view, from a single page. It also provides the option of Keyword grouping, which assigns keywords to customizable folders, by listing, product type, CPC, spend, click volume. Unique keyword records enables advertisers to create a separate record for each combination of keywords and CPC, it allows better analysis and planning to manage keyword campaigns.

However, the major drawback of Search 123 is that it accepts traffic originating from English speaking countries, like USA, UK, Canada, and few other English-speaking countries. Its minimum bid amount per keyword at 0.05 cent is higher in comparison to other second rung PPC players.

Kanoodle

Kanoodle is a strong player amongst second rung search engines and has many distribution partners. They have partnership with AlltheWeb.com, Metacrawler.com, Mamma.com, Dogpile.com, Best20Sites.com, Hotbar.com, Galaxy.com, NetZero's Search Safari.

It requires an initial deposit of $50 and the minimum bid amount is 0.05, which is higher compared to other second rung search engines like enhance, searchfeed. It claims to provide searches of more than one billion; however, there have been complaints about lack of quality traffic through Kanoodle.

It offers four different products, Context target, Local target, Behavior target, and Keyword target. Context target lets you to place ads on content sites like MSNBC.com, MarketWatch, USATODAY.com. Local target helps advertisers focus on specific towns and cities, making it possible to geo-target their customers.

Behavior target determines segments of the audience based on their online behavior, surfing patterns, and other indicators to find their preference regarding products and services. On that basis, Kanoodle provides its sponsored listings to a targeted segment.

Keyword target lists advertiser’s website on website network of high quality search engines, Kanoodle site, CNET's Search.com, to the InfoSpace properties, including Webcrawler, Dogpile and more.

epilot

Started in 1999, epilot is owned by Interchange corporations and has over 300,000 advertisers. It claims to receive more than a billion searches per month. Their distribution network partner lists your website on 319-search partners’ website.

It requires a minimum deposit of $ 100 to open an account, the deposit acts as an escrow account towards the purchase of clicks to your site. The minimum bid amount is 0.07 cents, which is more than other well-known second rung search engines.

epilot has easy to use campaign management tools. It has a sophisticated reporting system that provides detailed reporting. The customer support is professional and provides customized answers.

In a short span, it has developed a good partnerships with other PPC search engines, such as LookSmart, FindWhat, 24/7 Real Media, Enhance Interactive, Business.com, and Search123. This has helped it to broaden its reach and provide quality leads.

Goclick

Goclick was founded in September 2000 and is a good PPC search engine. Goclick has easy to use and effective PPC campaign management interface. It claims to handle over 7.2 billion searches per year and delivers traffic to over 23,000 advertisers. It has more than 50 partner networks and provides millions of targeted searches per month.

An advertiser can open an account for $10. The minimum bid amount per click is 0.01 cents, lowest among good PPC search engines. goClick.com works on a debit account system, that is it will stop listing your ads when your funds run out, this way you cannot over spend.

It has advanced click blocking technology to block multiple clicks from the same visitor. It has a daily budget option, the advertiser can set up the maximum amount he/she is willing to spend per day. The BidMaster(tm) AutoBid tool adjusts bid amount to one cent higher than the next highest bid. Its account management system lets you upload up to 25,000 keywords through excel spreadsheet. You can also submit 400 keywords at one time using their standard web-browser submission form.

goclick major search distribution partners include ePilot.com, MetaCrawler.com, Mamma.com, DogPile.com, and Chocolate.com.

Pay Per Click advertising is the fastest growing medium of online advertising. There are various tools available online for better bid management and for searching optimal keywords, tracking traffic and conversions. Every Pay Per Click (PPC) search engine provide their own tools for easier and better management of PPC. PPC Search Engine’s tools are free, quick, and easy to use.

Google’s Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, Miva, Searchfeed, Askjeeves, and most of the other PPC search engines provide keyword tools. Keyword tools help in researching relevant keywords, which will generate quality traffic, and provides an estimate of the number of clicks that will be received. PPC Search Engines have inbuilt tool available for bid management, the user can decrease or increase, as per his/her assessment. The inbuilt tools also lets you know, the total number of click received, position of the particular keyword’s ad, average cost per click, and total cost. Yahoo Search Marketing (Overture) offers a ROI calculator, a CPM calculator.

Certain PPC search engines like Overture, Adwords and Miva have conversion tracking tool, that lets advertisers track the number of conversions, through a particular campaign, cost per conversion and other related details. There are websites, which exclusively provide keyword tools, like keyword anaylyzer and worktracker. There are certain websites that offer bid management services, Atlasonepoint, Maximizer and others.

Pay Per Click Search Engines allows marketer/advertiser to bid for top positions on the sponsored listings or PPC search engines. The advertiser only pays when a user clicks on the ad; the amount charged is equivalent to the bid amount placed on a keyword that led searcher to your listing.

A persistent online bidding process determines the position of your website’s ad on PPC Search Engines. Managing and handling a PPC search engine’s campaign is different from other promotional medium, before starting to manage a PPC campaign one should be aware about the techniques and the elements of PPC advertising.

	First you need to open an account with a PPC search engine that you are planning to use. At the time of opening of an account, you might have to deposit a sum to activate your account.
	After you have opened an account, take your time to go through the different tools and aspects of that particular search engine and learn how to use the PPC tools to your benefit
	You need to research and select optimal keywords for submission and after you have a list of good keywords submit them.
	You create and develop ad’s Title and Description and submit them along with the website’s URL.
	You have to place bid amount on your submitted keywords. The bid amount depends on three factors, your preferred position, your budget, and your competitors’ position.
	Your position is determined by the bid amount placed on a keyword or search phrases. If your chosen keyword is highly contested, the highest bid will receive the most prominent ad space.
	When a searcher uses a keyword to find sites like yours, if you have submitted that keyword and placed your bids, your ad will appear for that keyword and your ad’s position will depend on the bid amount.
	Every time a searcher clicks on your ad, amount equal to the bid placed on that keyword is deducted from your deposited sum.
	All PPCs require money up front in order to fund your listings. When the money runs out, your ads are automatically removed from the search engine’s listings until you re-fund your account.
	Search engines determine the minimum bid amount on a keyword and each search engines has their own set of rules and guidelines about keywords submission, bids and ads management.

The position of the ad often depends on the bid amount, however, google’s adwords uses a slightly different yardstick to give position to your ads. Adwords uses both cost per click and click through rates to determine your ad’s position.

Google: Your click through rates and Cost per Click (CPC) determines your ad’s position on sponsored listings. If the ad does not get the required number of clicks, you might lose your top positions for that keyword. In the same way, if your ads are getting good percentage of click throughs, your ads will be better positioned at no extra cost to you. Google AdWords charges a one-time $5.00 setup fee and after that, you pay only for delivered traffic.

Yahoo! Search Marketing (Overture): Yahoo! Search Marketing considers only your bid amount to determine your ad’s position on its listings. The more you pay, the higher you’ll be ranked on its search pages. Overture requires a minimum charge of $25/month deposited regardless of whether or not your click through has accumulated to that total. Its minimum bid amount is 0.10 cents, the highest compared to other PPC search engines.

Define your objective: It is important to decide on an objective beforehand before embarking on a PPC campaign. The objective of a PPC campaign should be quantitatively defined; as it is easier to measure the results. The campaign’s objective might be to generate leads, subscription, sign ups, revenue or orders. Each dollar spent on a click should give you appropriate returns, otherwise, your whole campaign’s effort nullifies.

Determine your target: After you have identified your PPC’s objective, you need to determine your target customer. Not every one who clicks on your ad is your prospective customer. You should determine your target customer depending upon the product or service your website is offering. It not only helps in finding out the right keywords and search terms for the campaign but also helps in developing ad’s copy that generates high quality clicks.

Set your budget: Do not over indulge or be constraining in your PPC spending, set your budget depending upon your company’s resources and PPC’s objective. It is a different medium of advertising, so you need to use slightly different yardstick while deciding on your budget. At the time of deciding on a budget, you should keep in mind that cost per click varies depending on the bid amount on key phrases and the number of clicks you are receiving.

Building keyword pool: Build your keywords’ pool by doing comprehensive research for the optimal keywords/search terms. The research can start from your own website and move on to competitors’ website and customers, and other sources. After a proper analysis of your products or services, your target customers search habits, competitors’ keywords; you will have a list of important keywords that hold the key to your PPC campaign’s success.

However, it is imperative that the keyword/search term should be relevant to your website’s content and offers. You also need to consider that it is unlikely to apply to any other product or services. In a highly competitive market, you may often find that the top bid for a search term is far higher than your own margins allow. Often you can attain far better value by choosing keywords that are more specific. You can consider using search terms that are more likely to be used by people searching for your kind of products or services.

On a regular basis, you need to monitor the performance of each keywords/search terms by tracking the number of click through rates and conversions. It mi