Best Pay Per Click Search Engines- What Are the Pros and Cons?

There are many pay per click advertising search engines to choose from online. The traffic quality varies across all of them. Some generate more sales than others and give you a better return on your ad spend.

3 of the best pay per click search engines for traffic quality are: Google AdWords, Yahoo Sponsored Search and Microsoft’s adCenter.

According to ComScore.com these 3 have the following search market share in the United Sates (in March 2010):

Google Sites: 65.5%
Yahoo! Sites: 16.9%
Microsoft sites: 11.7%

Why is this important? Between just these 3 search engines they have an astonishing 94.1% of the search market share in the US. Ask have a 3.8% share and AOL have 2.5%.

This means the top 3 have the most traffic for you to tap into.

Which search engine should you use to run your Pay Per Click Advertising on and why? Here is a pro/con review of each…

GOOGLE ADWORDS

Pros:

Huge search volume. Because of this you can also dig deeper into your market and target niche markets.

Keyword research. They offer the best keyword research tool in my opinion and it is very simple and easy to work with. It gives you a ton of data on just about everything.

Excellent user interface. The AdWords interface has always been very clean and user friendly. They recently changed the interface and have improved it further to allow you to make multiple changes faster amongst other things.

Target different networks. You can target their content network (also known as Google AdSense) as well as different search networks.

Target different devices. You can target mobile phones as well as computers.

Ads go live fast. You don’t have to wait too long to get your ads approved.

Upload multiple campaigns easily. If you have big campaigns and many of them, you can upload them quite easily using the Google Adwords editor program.

Cons:

Very competitive. It is getting more and more competitive so you must get a good quality score with them. And this can also affect your sales.

Uncertainty for the future. If you base your business around this type of traffic you are vulnerable to the changes in Google that could happen overnight and stop your traffic dead.

Stricter guidelines. Guidelines are getting tougher as Google try to thin the herd and unlike the old days, it does take some work on your campaign to get a good quality score.

YAHOO SPONSORED SEARCH

Pros:

Good amount of search volume. So you can target different markets and niche markets.

Guidelines not as strict. Guidelines can be more relaxed than Googles’s but not by much.

Less competition. Less than Google that is but is still competitive.

Cons:

Keyword research. The keyword research tool is not as good as Google or Microsoft’s.

User interface. Not the cleanest and easiest use. Takes longer to put your campaigns together.

Less targeting options. Not as many as you would find at Google and Microsoft.

Uploading multiple campaigns. This is not as easy to do as it is in Google and Microsoft. You have to email your campaigns to Yahoo unless you have a gold account.

MICROSOFT ADCENTER

Pros:

Keyword research. Their keyword research tool has been improved lately and does include a demographic search option (something Google doesn’t offer). But Google’s keyword research tool is still more advanced.

Not as competitive. Not as competitive as Google and Yahoo.

Target by demographics. You can target by age and gender which can increase your sales.

Less strict on guidelines. A little less than Google but not by much.

Upload multiple campaigns. This requires the Microsft Silverlight application which is free. You can also import campaigns from Google and Yahoo.

Cons:

Not as much search volume. No where near as much search volume as Google and Yahoo which means less traffic.

User interface. This user interface is not as clean and as simple as Google’s but is better than Yahoo’s.

Less targeting options. You can’t target as many networks and devices as you can in Google.

Summing up The best pay per click search engine (in my opinion) is Google AdWords because the keyword research tool is the really good. The competition is high and guidelines are strict but they also have the most traffic which really helps.

They have a great user interface which makes setting up campaigns quick and easy.

Both Yahoo and Microsoft don’t have the search volume that Google does. This means it is harder to get traffic in niche markets where the competition is lower. But with the merger of Yahoo and Microsoft, there should be some great improvements ahead.

Source : http://www.sitepronews.com/2010/09/06/best-pay-per-click-search-engines-what-are-the-pros-and-cons/