The days of neutral and free search engines are long gone. All the major search engines make money these days, and lots of it as well. Most use Pay Per Click ads which appear on their search result pages in addition to other methods, such as paid listings for example. Pay per click advertising seemed to be the perfect solution both for the search engines and companies eager to get as many visitors to their website as possible and have a marketing budget to do just that. The advertiser builds an ad around a keyword and submits it to a search engine which displays the ad when a search for the keyword is executed. The advertiser pays a nominal sum to the search engine for every click through from a visitor.

The problem with PPC is the competition. The advertiser with the highest bid wins the best placement which is usually at the very top of the search result pages. Google being the most popular search engine is also the most expensive in terms of bids for specific keywords. However, you can generate good amounts of traffic using other search placements through Microsoft Adcenter, Yahoo Search Advertising and Search Feed, Ask.com Sponsored Listings, Looksmart AdCenter, Miva, ABCsearch, Enhance, Mamma Coperic Media. It is very likely that these will charge you less than Google for a top advertising spot for a specific keyword. It also makes sense to use many different search engines to bring in traffic as oppose to using only Google. So if you’re thinking about using PPC ads to support your campaign and have the budget to do so, don’t spend it all in one place!