April Q&A by Dan Cunningham

Question: Is it true Microsoft is creating their own pay-per-click search engine to compete with Overture and Google? If so, how does this affect me and which service should I use? Signed, Confused! Answer: Dear Confused, Gives us five minutes and we'll give you the skinny on all the latest in the pay-per-click search engines. Right now, there are 2 major players in the PPC market (soon to be 3). They are: Google Adwords This is by far the easiest to manage PPC engine around. If you are going to pick one PPC engine to participate in, choose this one. Budgets are right on, keyword tools are built in and easy to use, and the management interface is very well organized. Google ads tend to be slightly more expensive as you don't have total control over position and bid mount. I've noticed that you tend to get more traffic for less money at Yahoo, but this can vary depending on what keywords you are bidding on obviously. In the testing phase at Google right now is their new CPM payment model. Essentially, you pay a flat fee for every 1000 times your ad is displayed on Google or a Google partner site (like AOL Search), regardless of how many clicks you receive. We'll have to see how this pans out over the next few months when this service is launched. Google ads appear primarily on Google (obviously) and AOL. They also have a broad network of third party sites and smaller search engines that they will get you on. Yahoo Search Marketing Services (formerly Overture) In early 2004, Yahoo bought Overture Inc (which was formerly GoTo.com). Since that time, nothing has really changed. In Q1 2005, Yahoo announced that they will be wrapping in the Overture name under the Yahoo name. There are no expected changes aside from the name change at this time. Yahoo's Service is called Sponsored Search: this is like Google Adwords - you pick the keywords you want and Pay-Per-Click. Your ads appear as "Sponsored Links" on Yahoo and MSN search. Yahoo also has a service called "Search Submit" where you pay a one time "setup fee" and then Pay-Per-Click when someone clicks through to your website. The only difference is, you don't show up in the "Sponsored Results" - these are real, organic search results. You just can't guarantee placement as it's based on Yahoo's search algorithm. The amount you pay for each click varies by industry. For more on this service, see: http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/srchsb/sse_pr.php For more on Yahoo's plethora of search marketing services, see: http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com Coming soon - MSN AdCenter It has long been rumored that MSN is building a search engine of it's own. In November when MSN search beta came out, we all knew it wouldn't be long before MSN released their own pay-per-click engine. There is a lot of speculation about the new AdCenter system as to when it will be available. MSN has said they will be doing beta testing in France by the end of 2005, so rumor is that the system will be widely available mid-2006. Interestingly enough, MSN has a contract with Yahoo that it will display PPC ads from Yahoo on the MSN site until mid 2006. I figure that MSN will start out mixing in their own ads and using Yahoo fill in the blanks until their contract runs out. So where do I advertise? If you have the budget, do pay-per-click advertising with Google and Yahoo. There are other players that you can dabble in such as Findwhat.com, Ask.com, etc. I saw a formula the other day that the number of people using MSN plus the number of people using Yahoo Search = number of people using Google. Based on traffic to our sites, that is pretty a pretty accurate assumption. That said, split your money between the two big PPC players and that will get you good coverage on the "big 3" (Google, Yahoo, MSN) search engines. That's for the time being anyway. This will all change once MSN AdCenter goes live.... Don't you just love the internet? ;-)