Forum Moderators: open
thank you so much,
:)
cathrine
Who "powers" the above?
... Are you asking which service
is better?
Who does Ah-Ha supply results to? [webmasterworld.com]
Sprinks and Findwhat [webmasterworld.com]
not too sure about 7search
<added>sorry
welcome to WebmasterWorld hwy2hel
and thank you so much :)
cathrine
<No URLs, please ~Marcia>
[edited by: Marcia at 6:31 am (utc) on June 11, 2002]
For example, one of my people did only PPC (Overture) until a couple of months ago, prior to having any regular search engine rankings, which are now at Google, AOL and MSN (Inktomi). She pulled all her PPC budget last week and I got an email Monday that she had 15 good orders over the weekend, with no PPC. And that's without being yet where she should be with our primary keyphrase.
That's for that particular market sector, and clearly indicates where the PPC dollars should be focused for that site. It's also shown that no $ needs to be spent on the phrases that there are rankings for, so the PPC expenditure can be more efficiently and effectively allocated to the others until PPC is no longer necessary, which it looks like could be late summer. In fact, trying FindWhat for a limited amount might show what the more competitive words would do at other search engines, since they'd cost so much less. Just to test the waters as an additional benchmark.
A lot can depend on your target market. You can set aside a test budget to try a couple of new PPCs and analyze the results over a limited time frame to compare.
When AOL makes the total switch there's likely to be quite a hubbub about it, with a dramatic upswing in traffic and attention, so you might want to test the waters now with Google for a couple of weeks on a test set of words, and FindWhat as well.
Just me personally - I work a lot on an instinctive basis coupled with common sense, and it seems logical to me that if I'm trying something new, I'd rather try two at a time to have an equal basis to make a comparison and evaluate which is better; either or one may be lucrative or a waste, but there has to be a basis for comparison that's equal.
... FindWhat is definitely a must followed
by ah-ha
As far as what Marcia was saying in reference
to Google...
Currently Goolge displays their sponsored
listings (adwords) to AOL's search.
---> Definitely something to keep in mind.
Along with AOL's switch to use Google for
the sponsored listings on their search they
also announced that they were going to switch
their regular (unpaid) search listings from
Inktomi to Google later in the summer. Here
is where you can pick up the free traffic if
you are ranked well.
Some people may disagree, but I do not agree
with the concept "until PPC is no longer
necessary"
#1 We are only speaking about one search
property - what about all of the other
ones that do not use Google
#2 When AOL switches to Google the listing
will be organized in a similar fashion as they
are today therefore making your #1 listing
in Goolge still only rank #4 beneath the
sponsored listings.
On another note...
You have to remember that the traffic coming
through services such as FindWhat and
Overture is not only coming from large search
portals....
A good portion of Overture's, most of
Findwhat's and ah-ha's traffic come from
smaller niche sites.
For instance FindWhat may partner with
an insurance site that provides free
info. FindWhat helps them leverage their
existing traffic by letting them display
FW results in a certain area of their
site.
This type of distribution cannot be reached
through standard SEO.
