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firstly I'm brand spanking new to the forum but will probably be seen here quite regularly as I'm an SEO freak :-) I live and work in Hannover, Germany but I am in fact an Englishman.
Enough about me, let me get on with the question...
It seems english keywords are not the only words that can be bid for at GoTo. There is some bidding going on for German keywords but very little from what I can tell.
Of course hardly anyone in Germany uses GoTo and as far as I'm aware I don't think GoTo are affiliated with any German SE. I just did a tad of research on the keyword "immobilien". This keyword gets queried 14.230 times a month from GoTo and has at the time of this post a bid for $0.03. The US equivalent("real estate") is currently bidding at $1.17 albeit for substantially more hits. Even so, it seems to make sense to me to bid for keywords in GoTo for 2 main reasons.
1. GoTo are likely to expand. They are now making a profit and will most likely want to consolidate with providing results for German engines before long.
2. You have nothing to lose. Payment is based on click throughs so if they dont click, you don't pay. At $0.03 a click I'd say you getting an excelent "bang for your buck".
I think I'd give it a try as a real estate agent in Germany.
Just a thought and I'm interested in yours regarding the subject.
Webby
(edited by: rencke at 9:21 pm (gmt) on Sep. 18, 2001
As to Goto and German keywords: There is a thread about GoTo's "dance card" somewhere in the PPC forum. If you compare that to the list of major German SE:s in the Germany discussion here in the European forum, you will find that GoTo actually has a surprisingly big presence in Germany. That is why GoTo is showing so many searches for the German word "immobilien".
So far, competition for non-English words is much much lighter than for English keywords - as evidenced by your finding - so I think you are right. It is possible to buy top 3 placement for important non-English keywords at a very low price - so far, anyway.
If you go ahead with your plan, do let us know what kind of results you got. I am sure averyone here would be extremely interested to learn about how much traffic GoTo can generate in mainland Europe.
<added>for fairness: Metaspinner and MetaLook, rather obscure meta SEs also have goto results in their mix</added>
