low bid..then what?

if you dont bid in top 5

[soapystar]

so...what happens when you make a bid that is not in the top 5.....does your advert ever get presented....i did a few searches and it seems only the top sites get listed in sponsored results.....does that mean if you bid outside the top 5 you are wasting your time?

[Shak]

NO, your ad is shown and sometimes can result in better ROI.

a # of Overture partners choose to only display the top 3 or 4 results, however a lot more show all the results.

having a quality title and description in any PPC ad is more important than bidding to be # 1.

Shak

[too much information]

I don't think that is the case. I am redesigning my site and in the mean time I have bumped all of my bids to the minimum. I still get some traffic and I am 8th or worse for most of my terms.

If I could have put them on hold I would, but I don't want to forget some of those terms.

I have noticed that if you are not in the top 3 sometimes you will appear after the regular search results. (stll on the first page though)

One thing that bothers me is for terms which seem to be the most competative, it's not the top 3 that are the premium spots but the top 2! It started a real bidding war.

[hobbnet]

If you aren't in the top few listings you typically won't get listed with the big partner search engines that use overture, like Yahoo! But there are many other smaller SEs that use Overture and show all their results as stated above.

You just have to decide if you mind getting listed on those smaller SEs and not on the bigger ones like Yahoo! Try to find out what type of SE converts best for you.

[soapystar]

anyone got a list of the smaller engines?

[Andy_Reid]

My experience suggests that there are more 'impulse' type buyers when you are listed in the top 3, so ROI seems to be good there.

I don't dispute that you can turn a nice ROI at lower bid levels, and that this will allow you to operate at a smaller budget, but you are sacrificing volume.

I could take some very successful listings and move them from #1 to #8 and I might attain a similar ROI but I would be sitting around twiddling my thumbs waiting for the traffic.

Just my opinion!

[ogletree]

I have noticed that I am number 4 for a word and it does not show up on Yahoo at all but does show up on MSN. Nobody shows up on Yahoo not even number 1. Yahoo must decide that it does not like some words to have overture ads. I did notice that Yahoo has their stuff at the top and when you click on that you get lots of Yahoo banners. (1 North, 3 east.)