review of Pay Per Click services Options

please let me know which services you use. I dont believe it is worth paying for more than 2 - google & overture. Many exist though, and you can see who uses what: :idea:

http://www.ask-marketing-experts.com/showt...s=&threadid=241

<Moderator note: The above link takes you to a poll at another forum, but you'll have to register there to vote. For that reason, I've added our own poll here for those who want to reply, but don't want to register at another forum especially to do so. - BK>

Hi,

I would just like to know why it is that Overture uk gives a higher figure in it's results than Espotting. Is it because of the search engines Espotting covers - they aren't used as much by searches than the search engines Overture covers, i.e. Overture uk - MSN, Freeserve, AOL, Lycos & Alta Vista Vs Espotting's main outsource which is Yahoo!

For example:

villa rentals spain gets 1304 searches in Overture but only 18 searches in Espotting

If anyone could help that would be great!

You have correctly assessed one important factor there, mitzyb. However, just the size of the partner engines is not the end of the matter, there are also some demographic differences.

For instance, one of the most interesting partnerships that Espotting have is that it provides the default search results to the EasyEverything internet cafes. Since these are primarily in city centers and high-street locations, the customers there are often researching a purchase about to be made locally.

Unfortunately, detailed demographic breakdowns of the kind of users that various engines and portals attract is not published. You really need to look at the partners yourself and make educated guesses.

Who still uses Altavista, for example, and why? Altavista was the first search engine to provide translation of pages in other languages. For that reason it gained a strong following in Europe early on. It also still has a following in many universities. I always found AV to be a poor referrer for sales, since many of its users did not even own credit cards, and were very unlikely to actually buy anything no matter how good the sales pitch.

Yahoo users are most likely to be those impressed by size and reputation - the one that is best known and most advertised is the one for them. This not only attracts newbies, but also attracts important company executives who don't use the net themselves very often. Traditionally, Yahoo users prefer sites that look impressive, and they are more likely to prefer nice graphical effects.

Google grew by word of mouth. Google users are more likely to have friends to give them opinions (and so are less likely to fall for cons perhaps). Google users want results rather than eye-candy and portal services. If you waste the time of these referrals, they'll be off to another site faster than you can guess.

Many people claim that they get better refferals from Overture than from Espotting, while many claim the opposite. They offer slightly differing demographics, and your success for a given term (and product) will depend somewhat on how that demographic reacts (or even feels interest in) your services.

Hi,

I would just like to know why it is that Overture uk gives a higher figure in it's results than Espotting. Is it because of the search engines Espotting covers - they aren't used as much by searches than the search engines Overture covers, i.e. Overture uk - MSN, Freeserve, AOL, Lycos & Alta Vista Vs Espotting's main outsource which is Yahoo!

For example:

villa rentals spain gets 1304 searches in Overture but only 18 searches in Espotting

If anyone could help that would be great! 

Hi Mitzyb:
Not sure about Overture UK but I have done a bit of research regarding Overture US that you may find interesting.

If I use Wordtracker to determine the number of searches for a particular keyword on say Yahoo (which has some 121 million searches per day) versus the same keyword on Overture (which has some 18 million searches per day) The Overture suggestion tool always seem to report far more searches than seems logical.

Lets take a random example - lets use the some generic term like - baby furniture:

Word tracker estimates that this term gets 1544 searches per day on Yahoo and 229 searches per day on Overture, but if we go to the Overture
sugestion tool they say that the term was searched for some 77905 times in August or 2486 times daily on the average

Something is wrong in Denmark. How can Overture with only 18 million searches per day have nearly twice as many searches per day with respect to Yahoo, who have ten times more searches per day overall?

Could be a coincidence, could be an anomoly with respect to this keyword, Could be that Wordtracker is under reporting their numbers or, dare we think it, someone is over reporting their number of searches.

I ran the little test above live confident that the results would come out just as they have, because it has been that way for over 100 key phrases that I have checked.

I invite you to try it yourself - You can get a free trial of Wordtracker at http://www.wordtracker.com and the URL for the Overture suggestion tool is http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinve...ory/suggestion/.

To anticipate some possible questions, I have discussed this subject with the founders of Wordtracker, and believe that the number of searches daily and the market share of each engine that they report is reasonably accurate (based on the best sources available), but there will obviously be some differences that can be ascribed to their methodology, but these IMO should be in the range of 10-15%.

  
Could be a coincidence, could be an anomoly with respect to this keyword, Could be that Wordtracker is under reporting their numbers or, dare we think it, someone is over reporting their number of searches.

I have long questioned the validity of overtures search suggestion tool, mainly because it is so general. It would not surprise me if OVER was inflating their position, much as the penile enlargement spam that is so pervasive online. Both claim to engorge you with vitality, but after you send money, all bets are off.

Rather than lambast Overture I think that all of the PPC providers tools for providing search results are very weak.

We use Google and in some instances they suggest we will get <0.1 clicks a day, when we actually get tens and in some cases hundreds of clicks a day. We've had the same experience with Looksmart Premium Listings where they suggest we would get 50-100 a month and we got over 4000 (on a CPC basis).

The results from Espotting are probably the most accurate, but we often get errors when trying to search for keywords.

But utlimately, the weaker these tools are, the more value inventory will get left unbidded or bid for cheaply, which makes the value proposition for outsourced PPC pretty good.

I am also surprised that only 7 people voted in the poll, there must be more users of the forum that use PPC?

We use Google and in some instances they suggest we will get <0.1 clicks a day, when we actually get tens and in some cases hundreds of clicks a day. We've had the same experience with Looksmart Premium Listings where they suggest we would get 50-100 a month and we got over 4000 (on a CPC basis).

Well yes Jim, but in the case of Overture, it appears that they are going in the other direction, i.e. reporting more searches done on keywords than is perhaps true, which would seem to me to be an attempt to make them appear more valuable, and hence encourage higher bids.

Mel,

It's a fair point you make. I think because of the dynamic nature of search you will only ever have a snapshot, from any provider. Because it's all historical you can only best guess.

This is one of the major reasons why I think Wordtracker is better for some searches, because it's a rolling 60 day period, the results from yesterday will show today, so if there is a spike, it will be seen.

Ultimately, it's pay per click and as wrong as everyone gets the numbers, if they don't click, you don't pay.

Frankly, I don't care how many searches they say, I've grown accustomed to the fact the figures are so inaccurate it is un-important. The true barometer for me is how many clicks can we get, and when you get the report at the end of the month, what sort of market share (CTR) did you get for that keyword. When you bid on your own, or with one other advertiser, if your not getting 20%+ CTR then your doing something wrong.

I've made the following my ultimate quest for PPC results for clients:
[list]
Keywords with in excess of 100 clicks in a month
No more than 2 other advertisers
CTR in excess of 10%
ROI in excess of 500%
[list]

What's your ultimate quest?

It is worth remembering that Overture lists searches, including all searches done by position checkers and (in some cases) bidding tools. This can drastically change the proportion of searches to click-throughs. Wordtracker culls its data from meta engines which position checkers (in the main) don't run through - so search data is likely to be more accurate.

Espotting should show dramatically less searches than Overture UK. It only really appears on Yahoo UK as a major search destination. Remember, Overture UK have the searches done on Yahoo.com (the majority) if the ISP DNS lookup determines it is a UK surfer.

Good Point MMT, and may well account for the inflation of results at Overture, since many PPC management programs check all keywords several times per day.

Jim: yes I agree that you need to check your ROI once you choose the keywords, but in choosing them one of the factors is how many people are using them for searches, so this is a bit of chicken and egg situation. You need to first target search pharses that real searchers are using, and only aftwerwards can you check your results to see what clickthroughs and ROI result.

Interestingly enough, although Overture introduced the ransom note 4 digit code to stop the automatic checks of unapproved software I didn't notice a drop at all in the level of searches made.

So either the degree to which Overture said it was a problem was over-stated, or the approved software users are the culprits, or people are going through the pain of the 4 digit code, or there has been a large increase in the number of searches to compensate for this.