ppc reviews

Experienced Search Engine Advertisers already know one of the truisms of Online Marketing & Pay Per Click Advertising. The cost of a click is only meaningful in relationship to revenue per visitor.

Many Pay Per Click Search Engines which advertise low starting bids are actually more expensive as it may take hundreds of clicks to generate a conversion (if any conversions are generated at all).

When we first started advertising by Pay Per Click for some of our various sites, we were astonished at the 'high' bid prices at the larger Pay Per Click advertising solutions, Overture & Adwords. By comparison, the bid prices on some of the smaller Pay Per Click Search Engines seemed like a bargain. However, we quickly learned that not all PPC search traffic is created equal. Imagine our surprise when one well known Pay Per Click Search Engine drained a fifty dollar deposit at 5 cents per click in a matter of hours. Our tracking indicated that only 3 or 4 out of the 1000 "visitors" did anything at all when they got to the page. None converted. While that experiment was a failure, we did learn that "cheap traffic" can actually be much more expensive. As an educated guess, were we to let our campaign run until we had a conversion, our cost would have been $100 per conversion or a $90 loss per conversion for that particular site we were promoting in the ad. While this example is dramatic - it is not the only example of poor quality traffic that we have experienced.

To be fair, some of the smaller Pay Per Click Search Engines are not too bad at all. The important number to measure is revenue per visitor. On the smaller Pay Per Click Search Engines that we still use, we first used a control ad which has been successful on Adwords & Overture to determine conversion rates & revenue per visitor over time (300-500 visitors on the smaller Pay Per Click Search Engines). Our bids, then, gravitated to a percentage of revenue per visitor. We also track each keyword independently because of the way that Pay Per Click Advertisements are syndicated. If one of your keywords receives a lot of traffic from poor quality sites or is subject to Click-fraud from dishonest affiliates this inefficiency should be reflected in the bid prices for each individual keyword. This strategy has been returning consistent returns with only a few (passing) exceptions.

The best values, despite the, seemingly high, bid prices remain Overture (Yahoo) and Adwords (Google). Both have high conversion rates for our Control Ad & provide consistently high Return on Investment. Among the smaller PPC Search Engines we have reviewed, we were impressed with 7Search.

Formerly known as 'ah-ha', the Pay Per Click Search Engine called Enhance Interactive has provided mixed results. Be aware that Enhance does not offer Geotargeting, so your PPC ads might be running in areas that you cannot service. Our first test with enhance proved to be unfruitful using our Control ad which converts at 35% on Adwords & Overture. To put a finer point on it, we lost money. Quickly.

It is possible the our bid was simply too high. Before we had the opportunity to test our ads at a lower cost per click, we were offered the opportunity to advertise on Enhance's special Pay Per Click network comprised, largely, of acquired domains... parked, and running ads from Enhance advertisers (and possibly others). The pitch here was that now we would experience targeted traffic, so conversions should improve. Given that we didn't have any conversions prior to that, it seemed reasonable that conversion rates couldn't get worse. Ok. we'll bite.

On the proprietary PPC advertising network we did start to see some conversions.

As we continued to track the 'new & improved' traffic, we found that it was converting at just under 7%. This was not enough to turn a profit for the keywords we were advertising. so we lowered our bids to a percentage of revenue per visitor. This move turned a profit. However, the volume on some of the keywords dropped considerably, making our profit in terms of dollars, nominal. That's a bit risky. If the traffic quality changes, our meager profit could easily turn to a loss. If we dropped our bids any further, the traffic would probably drop to the point where there was no point in advertising many of our keywords on Enhance's PPC advertising network.

Since we still had a deposit with Enhance, we tried to change a variable. Our Control Ad had been promoting the services of a company in the finance industry. We took the same ad text & pointed our ads to a competing company in the same industry to see if that converted any better. Nope. Our conversions dropped to 4.6%. (a loss at our current cost per click). There are a few keywords that work for us on Enhance's Pay Per Click Search Engine - but most of our ads went bust in short order.

Enhance's reporting has a glitch which make it difficult to reconcile cost per click by keyword. The overall click charges reconcile with the number clicks , but the click charges by keyword do not. Enhance's live (online) support told us that a new reporting system would be in place at the beginning of the year. Until then advertisers can only subtract A (cost) from B (revenue) to see if they turned a profit. Profits are nice, but better still, is a having a profit and knowing how it happened.

Unlike our experience with some other pay Per Click Search Engines. We did find a way to turn a profit with Enhance's PPC network- but only on their proprietary network &, even then, not enough to continue advertising most of the keywords we originally ran on their PPC advertising network.

Your mileage may vary depending on keywords & industry.

Conclusion: Neutral.

Searchfeed.com has been good to us (most of the time). You may want to test a few high volume keywords first, & if the traffic is satisfactory, build out your keyword list from there. We experienced good conversions in positions 3-5. The downside was that positions 3-5 yielded low traffic for us. So we look at SearchFeed as plus sales as opposed to a main source of revenue. Be aware, we did not fare well when taking a number 1 or 2 position on high traffic keywords. There was a tendency for unproductive spikes in volume for keywords in those positions. The traffic spikes usually only affect 1 or 2 related keywords - but being unsure of the source, we bid for positions 3-5 on SearchFeed.

SearchFeed is one of the few smaller Pay Per Click Search Engines to offer Geotargeting. Big Plus. Another nice feature is the ability to set all bids for keywords (or keywords matching a criteria) to positions 1- to 5 with a bid cap. This feature has proven handy in managing our cost per click. However, we would like to see the ability to edit bids by listing as opposed to just by keyword. Reporting is good - allowing advertisers to view clicks by keywords, by ad listing or by time.

Our conversion rates on SearchFeed average about 15%. While this is low by comparison to Adwords PPC & Overture PPC, our traffic can be purchased for much less per visitor. Our ROI with Searchfeed using out control ad averages 98%.

Conclusion: Recommended

Want your site to be where up to 80% of Internet users look to purchase products and services? With as little as $25, you can leverage off SearchFeed.com's existing network and start driving targeted traffic to your site.

As dedicated Pay Per Click Search Engine reviewers/masochists, when we found the special promotion for Search123, we signed up. Deposit $50 & get an additional $20 credited to you account. There is no ad review for Search123, but initial deposits must be verified by phone (for your security).

The Search123 interface is easy to navigate & ppc ads can be sorted by groups. Ads are up and running instantly. The keywords for our Control Ad had a minimum cost per click of 5 cents. In fact, we were able to run our entire campaign near the minimum cost per click - 1400 visitors in all.

While some of our traffic quality tests with other Pay Per Click Search Engines produced no conversions, the ppc traffic did from Search123 did convert. Once in a row.

Of the 1400 visitors sent to us from Search123's Pay Per Click Search Engine, our stats indicate that exactly 5 of them did anything at all when they landed on our landing page. Only one converted. Our $50 deposit & the $20 bonus was gone in less than 24 hours.

There is no Geotargeting with Search123 & we aren't sure where the traffic comes from. However the number of visitors provided a large enough sample to see that the traffic quality didn't work for our Control Ad. The same ad, which converts at 35% to 38% on Overture & Adwords, lost money on Search123.

Conclusion: Can't Recommend...Try Overture, Adwords, or 7Search instead.