If you are new to PPC campaigns, you better focus your efforts on the biggest PPC search engines – the ones that offer highest chances of generating oceans of traffic. Although, there are dozens of search engines and other PPC avenues available, however, building a strong foundation with some of the biggest search engines will generate great traffic for you right off the bat. Naturally, each search engine has its pros and cons and so conducting a thorough comparison to find the best ones for you will help your campaign succeed.
According to a study conducted by Hitwise (June 2008), Google still possesses the majority of PPC traffic, and so it makes an obvious choice to start with.
Google AdWords
Holding 70% of the PPC traffic market in 2008, Google’s AdWords is the toughest of the PPC search engines. Although it has its weaknesses, the fact that Google has the lion’s share of search traffic signifies that AdWords provides a great return on investment, provided that the campaign is continually optimized. Unfortunately, this is the same reason it has a higher CPC than other search engines. AdWords also has the best reporting options and most visibility of the PPC engines, allowing advertisers to view even the tiniest details of their campaign performance. It also has the best interface out of all the major PPC search engines, allowing new users to learn quickly and allow for efficient campaign optimization and management.
The AdWords quality score is complex and this is the main problem many users experience when trying to analyze their performance. With multitude options and competitors, users need to know exactly how to use AdWords to its full potential.
Yahoo! Search Marketing
As the second largest PPC search engine, Yahoo! can be a great secondary source for leads and revenue. Although AdWords is the most popular, Yahoo! generates over 2.5 billion searches every month which can translate into a huge number of leads for your campaign if used properly. With a lower CPC than AdWords and a great new interface launched in 2007, Yahoo! has made developments to give advertisers better visibility into their performance. The primary drawbacks of Yahoo! is that its reporting options are not nearly as great as AdWords’, but it makes for a great second option – or at least used to until their merger with MSN.
Microsoft adCenter
Although its search traffic is only about 1/7th of Google’s, MSN can provide a great source of supplemental revenue and traffic. MSN users are more trusting of paid ads and so are more likely to click on yours. CPC is also lower than AdWords and the reporting functions are comparable to Yahoo’s. Although, it has a quality algorithm similar to Google’s, you cannot see what your score is and the user interface is the weakest of the three.
To create the ideal campaign, use all three of these engines appropriately and exploit their strengths to get a great ROI.
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