FindWhat - ANYONE TRIED IT?

How was your results?

[IntegraGsrBalla]

Anyone recently tried FindWhat?

Since they merged with e-spotting?

Did you get OKAY results?

How was your traffic?

Anyone use a tracker with FindWhat?

Did you find any clicks from what you suspected was fraudualant clicks? Or from a click bot.

All of my ads are awaiting review.

I have a tracker installed on some of my landing pages.

I just tried kanoodle (WOW!, I will never try it again..Terreble Conversion Rate)

I've only been satisfied with overture, and adwords.

Overture is very hard to get listed if you run a affiliate ads.

But the results is worth it to me.

[bostonseo]

I feel strongly that Findwhat is the 3rd most legitimate programs after Overture and Google.

I have always found a way to make it profitable which has not been the case with the other 2nd/3rd tier cpc programs.

[bppilot]

I don't like how their site requires Active X. Of course I have Active X installed, but have it along with other technologies disabled due to drive-by-downloads, etc. I think this limits their user base somewhat.

Just my 2 cents on an area that could definitely be improved to make it a viable engine.

[ogletree]

It was bad. Spent all my first $50 and got nothing out of it.

[Tsuren]

FindWhat has a big problem. They get about 10%-20% their traffic from umaxsearch.com (aka searchmeup.com etc) and coolwebsearch. Both of them use a lot of affiliates which "work" with exploits. Actually about 80% of their traffic was made by spyware.

Really it's not a big deal today but the problem is growing.

[robotsdobetter]

It took forever for me to get all the clicks for 50.00 dollars. At the end of it I got very few sales, I tried five different sites, so I know it isn't just one or two markets.

[hobbnet]

I can get them to convert decently (and ocassionaly really well) for most of the areas I work in.

I would definitely give it a bigger test than $50 before you disregard them as a potential traffic source.

[iThink]

Findwhat send more junk/fraud clicks than any other second rank PPC engines out there if you are bidding for over 75 cents or so per click. In that case over 90% of traffic is clearly fraud traffic generated by a handful of their affiliate sites.

Quality of traffic is OK for keywords that cost under 25 cents/click but very little traffic is generated by such terms. IMO, this happens because their traffic generators (affiliates) concentrate on generating fraud traffic for high value terms only and low value terms get mostly genuine traffic.

So bid for keywords under 25 cents, if you must.

[nate_king1]

Yea but you have to understand FindWhat and Overture get a lot of traffic form Adware companies. Overture gets traffic from claria(SearchScout.com), 2020search, and CometSystems(Which was bought out by FindWhat) and internet-optimizer. FindWhat I'm not to sure but I know they are seen on CoolWebSearch.

[WebStart]

I use it, and have for years. But with a great deal of caution. In years of reading posts on this "club" I see both positive and negatives about FindWhat. The consensus of all those views over the years is that FindWhat remains number 3, behind Google and OV. I have found that in the last 12 -18 months the number of hits has declined from my listings with them, without too many changes in my bids. So, I think they are trying hard to weed out the fraud element in their system. I tried Enhance recently (formerly Ah-Ha) and got their recent newsletter which says in terms of ROI they and Find What are number 1 and 2 in results according to an independent marketing research co. Probably -- if true -- is based on the very low cost per keyword. You can see the report here:

[enhance.com...]

Not sure how much crediblility we should give it. I plan to post a separate topic to see if others have seen that report and, if so, their evaluation of it.

[nate_king1]

This case study is a joke. It has no real meaning what so ever.

"MarketingExperiments.com tested 31 health and beauty product keywords on Google, Overture, FindWhat and Enhance Interactive...."

Only 31 keywords in one industry does not make their ROI %537 compared to Googles' %107. If after a long period of time that might be usefull to marketers in that business. However no mention toward the length of period in which this study was taken.

For all we know Enhance has partners in the industry of Beatuy that convert well for the types of products the consumers are looking for. However overall their rank on my level is a 4/10.

[hobbnet]

Quality of traffic is OK for keywords that cost under 25 cents/click

This is not always the case. I pay $2+ for some terms and they convert incredibly well.

Lately I have been defending FindWhat a lot on WW. I don't mean to be a cheerleader for them because I have definitely had some bad campaigns with them. I just think people should not rule them out because I have had some incredibly successful campaigns with them as well.

[skibum]

We've edged into FindWhat lately and can't complain so far. In some cases, its actually performed better than AdWords in terms of cost per lead. Volume is small and we don't tend to bid all that high but they are worth a shot.

[Compworld]

We tried them on a few of our sites, and all's I can say is they are at the same level as ah-ha. This is why I suggested to Findwhat to change their name to Findnothing, but they have yet to make the change (or respond to my suggestion).

CompWorld

[BillyS]

I used FindWhat in a very competitive area - meaning that you had to bid into the dollars per click to be seen. The ROI was poor.

I do believe that you can get a decent ROI in some industries where a $0.20 or less bid will drive you some real traffic. If you go higher than that, you are a target for fraud.

I ran ads on Adwords, Overture and FindWhat. In Overture and FindWhat I tried to keep placement the same - position 3 or 4. You would be amazed at the number of clicks you get from these unknown search engines in the FindWhat network.

[Compworld]

We placed bids on Findnothing @ .05, and the fraud was massive. Just stay away from them. It's not worth the headache.

CompWorld

[hobbnet]

Compworld,
I don't understand why you are so completely negative with them. Maybe it was just your industry?

Campaigns I ran with them made ten of thousands of dollars after expenses last month alone.

[suzyvirtual]

I have used findwhat steadily for the last 3 years. Though I don't put nearly as much money into them as I used to, I am still able to get good conversions with low bid prices. Sometimes though (due to fraud, i guess) i just CANNOT convert a certain campaign or keyword that for everything i know in the universe should be getting some conversions. oh well, i think it is definately worth a try and because traffic volume is pretty low, its hard to accidently spend more than you meant to.

[chrisnrae]

Used them for a few years now. I've always seen good ROI, but not enough traffic. I complained to a rep for them about that this weekend and got the standard "we are working to find more distribution partners" as a response. LOL.

[Compworld]

I can only express what experience that I (and other webmasters/marketers) have experienced. The traffic that was received by Findnothing was just plain dirt. The sites that referred the traffic were mostly no name sites (and a lot of hotbar results), and the average time spent was .07. On a test campaign with $1000.00 and little to no ROI, on very precise keywords that do well on every other PPC we use. You can make the judgment, I just issue the warning, and you can make the call.

CompWorld

[keywordguru]

I agree that Findwhat has some luck to it. It is obviously a second or third tier network so you can't expect as much out of it. Yet they still do get clicks or else they wouldn't be in business.

So with that, do your best to NOT bid on high end terms. In my testing, I have found that popular terms always get fraudulent and junk clicks while the less popular and niche keywords get better quality clicks.
So don't do the obvious, go for more words that get less traffic.

As for people wanting to try them out, base the trial on a few things.
1. How much do you have to spend/lose?
2. How much profit do you make per sale?
So from this, you can easily put it into perspective and see just how much you will need to sell to make back your costs.
As a smart rule, start with $50 or $100 and consider it either the best $50 you spent, or the best $50 you lost. Either way you will WIN! because you'll get an answer cheap and will either now know that it is worthy and to continue, or to not waste your time.
Good Luck
KG

[hannamyluv]

we've found that if we keep bids to the minimum, we do okay (meaning we don't lose money). Otherwise, we get nailed with the fraud.

[Drackox]

FindWhat is actually a very good engine. Their bids might be a little higher then most people are used to but they distrubute their results everywhere.

Some companies that redistro their results are:

ePilot
7Search
Enhance
Google

there are many more, but those are just a few.

They are well respected by many people.

[edited by: jatar_k at 6:17 am (utc) on Oct. 17, 2006]

[BillyS]

FindWhat is actually a very good engine.

My experience was bad, fraud that they refunded. If you use FindWhat fly low. The higher the bid, the more fraud.

[anallawalla]

While it is not as good as it was 6-9 months ago, it ranks 4th or 5th in my list of PPCSEs.

[anallawalla]

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