Forum Moderators: open
TIA,
Spinner
1. Espotting (works for me)
2. Sprinks
3. Findwhat
Chosen for traffic, rather than features and customer service.
Espotting works out the most expensive for my search terms (and you have to pay them VAT) but the other two bring down the average total spend. Using those three, I am averaging approx $0.10 per click.
Goto - bids too high in competitive areas for me: $1.58 for my main keyphrase. Ouch!
Stavs
(edited by: stavs at 2:05 pm (gmt) on Aug. 21, 2001
GoTo
Sprinks
Findwhat
>Goto - bids too high in competitive areas for me: $1.58 for my main keyphrase. Ouch!
A CORE KW phrase we work with is $1.45, $1.45, $1.44
since we can't make $$$ at that rate, we don't bid it - PERIOD. Other phrases make sense and we do bid them.
My only way of judging PPC performance is by conversion rates. My goto conversion rates are something like 5 times findwhat and infinite times sprinks. I have yet to see a sprinks listing to produce sale for me. My mandatory $100 are soon to be spent anyways and that is the last that they will see from me. I am not saying that they will not work out for someone else, it just my experience.
Findwhat is not that bad but traffic is very limited.
GoTo
FindWhat
Sprinks
I'm based in the UK and there's really only one GoTo.
GoTo
ah-ha
findwhat
we just started working with ah-ha and we are already getting pretty good number from them.
I know why they do it - in the same way I know why people rob banks. But I don't like it.
No good for small fish like me :(. Strictly for the big hitters (or maybe small fish selling tungsten tip screws or hippie door beads).
Shame its going this way. PPC has clearly threatened the once level playing field - where the small fish could compete, using good SEO techniques - but Goto are going even further in tipping the scales in favour of the big hitters.
My prediction: minimum $0.10 per bid on Goto by the end of the year.
Stavs.
I wonder when, even that, will be too expensive and GoTo will cease to be an option in most of the highly searched areas. Only companies with massive budgets will be able to buy GoTo's traffic and the rest of us will be left looking for something new.
What will the next business model be for GoTo alternatives?
Nope just a necessary evil that you have to use, if you don’t play the GoTo game you don’t get in
1. kanoodle
2. findwhat
3. bay9
thats may change considering i will be expanging to brainfox, searchhound, and bigwhat this week
If I was a small, sole operator, I'd grab all the 1 cent bids acros the board, with the top 10 bid engines, <according to Alexa or whomever> build a war chest, and graduate to GoTo for a full rollout.
1. GoTo
2. ePilot
3. FindWhat
I've been really impressed with how much ePilot has improved over the past six months. They are currently rated the second highest ppc engine (next to GoTo) on Alexa based on traffic.
I've heard that they now have over 60 major search engine partners that they distribute to as well. Their site now says that they're redesigning their site and adding improved advertiser reporting services next month.
With GoTo's prices rising, ePilot has become the one for me.
Thanks Phoenixnix. Re ePilot, that's good information to know.
Sometimes though, I think the PPC business becomes an overcrowded field. I use about 5 PPCs and find my site turning up 4-5 times on mega search engines like Mamma.com and Dogpile. Double exposure probably helps, but quadruple? Anyway, I have not used ePilot, and wonder if anyone else has any experience with them?
ePilot is using one of the PPCs that I use to return some of their results on their "home" search engine for my primary keywords, but I would guess those "other PPC" input/results are not given by ePilot to the 60 some partners Phoenixnix mentions. But we have to wonder if those 60 aren't also partnered with GoTo, FindWhat or one or two of the other PPCs?? Seems like most use more than one PPC.
The only way to compare would be if they all provided complete partner lists, but that won't happen. The main reason is because some ppc engines (GoTo is a big offender) distribute results to sites that incentivize their searches. This brings down your quality. They don't want you to know they farm out results to those sources.
One of the things I liked about ePilot is that they provided a list of about 20 of their partners within their advertiser information section. Sure, some of them are smaller engines, but at least I was able to check their quality ahead of time. So far the successful results of my campaign have thus far proved those thoughts.
But if they are doing that, they just lost me as a major user -- up to now -- of their services.
By the way, if you want to add "fuel to the fire" when you speak with your GoTo rep, I specifically know of two large sites who incentivize that they distribute to. They are NetFlip and SearchCactus. These aren't exactly 'small-time' sites either. Who knows about the smaller incentivized ones?
Hope this helps, skipper.
However, today I searched on both and now I notice that for my keywords both those SEs are delivering results from Sprinks.com -- and SearchCactus.com also delivers some results (secondary) from 7Search.com -- but none that I saw from Kanoodle, nor from GoTo.
Changes happen every day; have to stay alert to stay up with this PPC business.
:)
Yes, and when you use more than the top 2 PPC programs the changes can effect your ROI with the possible multiple overlap.
Sorry Mike,
But how does using more than 2 of the top PPCs affect ROI?
It is my belief that a price conscious buyer while shopping for viagra [as an example] would look at many sites before buying. If several of those many sites were yours and you did or didn't make the final sale your overall ROI would have been reduced.
Just for fun:
If you bid #1 on 7search and #1 on search partners I, II, III and V, your chances of that happening are greater.
typo example here [7search.com] note that search partners are generated at random so not everyone will see the same thing.
