by Sheri Fink

Created on: May 25, 2007

The number of pay-per-click (PPC) search engines has increased over the past five years. The majority of Internet users still search using the top three search engines, Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. The two most popular PPC search engines are Google and Yahoo!. For this reason, advertisers should start testing their ads on these pay-for-placement engines.

Google AdWords

The largest and most popular of the pay-per-click search engines, Google has the highest volume of traffic. Advertisers pay $5 to register and can have ads running within minutes. The minimum bid is $0.01 and there is no spending requirement or time limit. Google AdWords utilizes a proprietary algorithm that also ranks ads according to relevance, allowing ads with higher click-through rates to display more frequently. One drawback to using Google AdWords is that because of its popularity, there are many advertisers already on their pay-for-placement search engine and keyword bids can be expensive.

Yahoo! Search Marketing

Yahoo! is the second most-frequently used search engine. Yahoo! Sponsored Search, formerly Overture, displays pay-per-click ads in Yahoo! search results on a variety of portals and search engines including Yahoo!, Excite, CNN, ESPN, AltaVista, and more. Advertisers pay $5 to open an account, minimum costs per click are $0.10, and ads are subject to editorial review before going live (which can take up to 2-3 days). Yahoo! offers a lot of features to help analyze and manage ads that can be added on for a recurring fee.

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