Does advertising in PPC search engines really work?

Maybe you’ve considered using pay per click (PPC) search engines to promote your web site on the Internet. PPC search engines are search engines that allow you to bid for a special position on their result pages. You pay a certain amount for every click your listing receives.

The site PayPerClickSearchEngines.com lists more than 500 pay per click search engines, however, there are only three big PPC engines that are worth your time and effort:

• Overture
  Overture is the biggest and most important PPC search engine worldwide. Overture listings appear on Yahoo, Lycos, AltaVista, InfoSpace, MSN Search and on many smaller sites.
  Overture has recently introduced it’s “Content Match” program. When someone visits a site like MSN and views content pages (such as articles), Overture will provide relevant listings on the same page.
• Espotting/FindWhat
  Espotting is the biggest European pay per click search engine provider. They have local search engines in all important European countries. Espotting listings appear on the European versions of Yahoo, Lycos, AskJeeves, AllTheWeb and many other major European search engines.
  Espotting is going to merge with the US search engine FindWhat later this year.
• Kanoodle
  Kanoodle is smaller than Overture or Espotting, but with 14,000 customers, it’s still larger than most other pay per click search engines. Kanoodle listings appear on CNet, HotBar, Galaxy and many other smaller sites.
  The bids on Kanoodle are not as expensive as on the other two PPC search engines. In addition, Kanoodle doesn’t require an initial deposit but they give you US$5 for free so that you can test their search engine risk-free.

But does it make sense to advertise on these search engines?

It all comes down to your visitor/sales conversion rate and the price of your products. To determine the usefulness of bidding on pay per click search engines, you must constantly monitor your bids. Only then you can know if PPC advertising works for your site.
Pay per click advertising can quickly become very expensive, for example the current top bid for the search term “data recovery” on Overture is US$5.15. That means that the advertiser pays US5.15 every time a web surfer clicks on his listing. For 100 visitors, that advertiser pays US$515.00. If these visitors don’t become customers, it’s wasted money.
Advertising your web site on PPC search engines can contribute to your web site promotion campaign. However, you should take care that you don’t pay too much per click and that you get a positive return on investment.

A recent study from Consumer WebWatch showed that web surfers prefer non-paid listings. For this reason, high rankings in search engines still matter and they cost less, too.