One of the questions that we get a lot from affiliates is “what is a good place to do pay-per-click (PPC) advertising that isn’t Google, Yahoo or MSN?” It’s a great question - surely there has to be some untapped alternatives to the big three, right? Well, I hate to say it, but in my experience, not really.

When writing for this blog I almost always leave out any discussion of advertising on second-tier search engines (search engines that are not the big three) - and I do this intentionally. While I admit that I have heard one or two positive comments about most of the second-tier engines, I usually hear horror stories. In my opinion (aside from a rare exception), the traffic coming from second-tier search engines tends to be pretty awful.

But why is that?

Well, I though about it for a while and here are some of the reasons that I can think of:

Second-tier Search Engine Aren’t Really Search Engines

When was the last time you went to a second-tier search engine to so a search online? Chances are you can’t remember - and for good reason - second-tier search engines’ results are usually pretty bad. And bad results tend to drive users away. If you think about it, it takes a lot of time, talent and money to come up with a good search algorithm. If you don’t believe me, ask Microsoft, who is still struggling to make their search results presentable to users.

Because building a good search engine is so difficult, second-tier “search engines” tend to be contextual advertising platforms - and there are some inherent problems with contextual advertising. This brings me to my second reason…

Second-Tier Search Engines Drive Lower Quality (Contextual) Clicks

As anyone who does PPC traffic can tell you, there is a big difference in traffic that comes from a search engine and traffic that comes from contextual advertising. Search engine traffic consists of people who are directly searching for relevant content and who come directly from the search engine to your website. Since the person is searching for what you are offering, they tend to be a better customer and their chance of converting is relatively high.

Contextual advertising, on the other hand, consists of individuals who are on a website (not a search engine) who are looking at content that is somehow related (but often not directly related) to what you are advertising. This means the searcher may see your ad and click on it, but it is rare that they are actively looking for what you are offering. A contextual click is therefore more of a casual click - and the clicker is less likely to convert for you.

If that isn’t bad enough, second-tier engines’ contextual partners are usually not that great, which brings me to my next point…

Second-Tier Contextual Partners Can’t Be As Good as First-Tier

All of the major search engines are investing a lot of time and effort into their contextual advertising programs, and for good reason. Search industry analysts know that the real growth in PPC advertising will happen in the contextual advertising, not search engine space. If you think about it, there is a large but finite number of searchers out there, and whenever they go to a search engine, they are likely to be served up a PPC ad. In the contextual market however, there are billions of websites out there that have yet to put up a contextual advertisement (like an AdSense ad). This, in the eyes of the search engines is untapped real estate for PPC ads, and the major search engines are aggressively aiming to get their contextual ads onto any willing website of good quality.

Generally, any site that wants to have contextual advertisements on it can have them. If you are a site owner who is going to put contextual ads on your site, chances are you are going to go with the company that can pay you the most. Like it or not, the first-tier engines have dramatically higher costs-per-click - and therefore higher payouts to their contextual partners.

So using simple logic, everyone who is doing contextual advertising in order to make the most money possible should be doing so with a first-tier engine. And it is my guess that a vast majority of contextual sites do so. However, there are a number of sites that the first-tier engines refuse to do business with, usually due to content or past issues with the contextual partner. It is my theory that these shunned contextual partners are what make up the contextual networks of most second-tier engines. Thus, the second-tier engines’ contextual partners can’t be as good as the first-tier engines.

By having lower quality partners, the smaller players open themselves up for the biggest problem with second-tier engines…

Second-Tier Engines have a Larger than Average Amount of Click Fraud

After my click fraud related Sausage Manifesto post on Thursday, Magnus Wester (one of our top 40 affiliates) made this observation:

I believe its unfair to target only Google, Yahoo and MSN in this discussion. In my experience, the REAL fraud centers are the second-tier “search engines” - Enhance, ePilot (worst of them all), Looksmart, Lycos, Miva, Search123…

I think Magnus hit the nail on the head. Because of the reasons listed above, the second-tier engines seem to be a hive of click fraud activity. As I am sure that most people can attest, the clicks received from the second-tier engines usually convert dramatically lower than those of Google or Yahoo. I can think of an example where we had an advertisement that converted at 30% with Google and less than 1% on a second-tier.

Conclusion
While I hear the occasional second-tier success story from affiliates, success seems to be the exception, not the rule. In the world of pay-per-click marketing, second-tier search engines are operating at a virtually insurmountable disadvantage - and their traffic reflects this.

While diversification of traffic sources is a good idea, it is difficult to find quality partners outside of the first-tier space. I know this is a tough pill to swallow, especially if you have been plugging away at AdWords and can’t seem to make a profit. My advice to you in that case is to keep trying, keep learning, and eventually you should turn the corner to profitability.

Now this is all opinion on my part, and I know that some of you aren’t going to agree with this analysis, which is fine. But if you are not totally deterred from throwing money at second-tier engines yet, I will leave you with this final bit of advice - to be successful in PPC it is essential that you work smart. Working smart means taking advantage of your biggest opportunities first. So, before you spend a minute doing anything on a second-tier search engine, make sure you are spent a considerable amount of time mastering (and profiting from) Google, Yahoo and MSN. Putting one hour of work into a first-tier engine lets you tap into a dramatically larger market than any second-tier can provide.

Alright, I hope that helps. Please let me know your second-tier search engine thoughts and experiences…

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