Pay-Per-Click Search Engines

Pay-per-click search engines (often referred to as PPC) are now one of the most effective ways to advertise on the Internet. No other method allows you to almost instantly put up highly targeted text ads that start getting results immediately. To get started, all you need to do is open an account with one of the many pay-per-click search engines, deposit some money, and bid for certain keywords. Whenever a visitor to that search engine enters the keyword(s) you bid on, your text ad will show up either on the top or side of the page. Each time they click your ad, you are charged for the amount you bid. Bids start at $0.01 per click for smaller engines, and $0.10 per click for popular engines like Yahoo Search Marketing.

Not all pay-per-click search engines are the same. The primary differences are in how much traffic they get, how expensive the bids are, how valuable the visitors are. See our list below for comments on the most popular PPC engines. We recommend that you sign up with at least several services to maximize your exposure.

This means, of course, that you must have some way to track the results you get. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of tracking. You need a way to know which engines are sending you good traffic and which ones aren't. This kind of tracking is called "conversion tracking," and fortunately, most pay per click search engines these days offer their own scripts which you can install on your site to track your conversions. At the very least, you want to have a counter on your site so you know how many visits you are getting. Don't always trust the statistics the PPC engines give you. If possible, you want your own software to do independent tracking. If you would like to run your own tracking, try a service like Hypertracker.

Below is a list of pay-per-click engines I have used, and my rating of each one.

Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly Overture)

This is one of the the biggest pay per click search engines and my favorite one. The only downside is that bids start at $0.10, which is kind of high, and the competition for good keywords is very high. If you open just one or two PPC accounts, then Yahoo Search Marketing is an obvious choice.
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Google Adwords

A great pay-per-click search engine that has become very prominent in recent years. I believe it is now bigger than Yahoo Search Marketing. Working with Google Adwords can be frustrating, since they often disable ads with low clickthrough rates. It can take some time to become an effective Adwords advertiser.
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Adbrite

Adbrite is a relatively new pay-per-click service that has come a long way in a short time. Their network now includes over 33,000 sites and over 733 million impressions per day. The interface is easy to use for anyone familiar with Adwords, and the traffic quality is good.
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Microsoft Adcenter

My guess is that Adcenter is probably the third largest pay per click search engine after Yahoo and Google. While the amount of traffic is significantly less than Google and Yahoo, this may change in the future, so it's worth keeping an eye on this one. MSN is a good third choice if you want more traffic than what you can get from just Yahoo and Google.
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Search 123

A good source of traffic, although smaller than Yahoo Search Marketing and Google.
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GoClick

They send good quality traffic, but they are still a small player, so the total amount of traffic you get will be small.
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Looksmart

The traffic quality is decent, but their user interface is very confusing and clumsy to use.
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Kanoodle

They sent traffic that didn't convert well for my sites. Your results may vary. Different industries and keywords get different results, so I think they are worth trying. Their support staff was very helpful.
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Enhance Interactive (formerly A-ha)

They claimed to send thousands of visitors, and my stats indicated otherwise. I asked them to review the clicks since they did not seem to be valid . They did, and refunded a small portion of my money (which according to my calculations was not enough to account for all the false clicks). Your results may vary. I don't think they are out to rip people off or anything like that, but I don't trust their statistics.
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