Comments on: Vertical PPC Search Engines and User Intent

By: John

John — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 18:44:50 +0000

@ Thagomizer,

Thanks for the comment! Glad to hear you’ve had success with a great niche search engine.

@ Jon,

I’ve had mixed results with Business.com, and in terms of ‘questionable clicks’ – I think that is a valid concern. You need to carefully review your reports and take the good with the bad in this case. Look at clicks versus visits (in Analytics). Yes, these stats will always be a bit different, but if there is an excessive difference, you may be suffering from ‘questionable clicks.’ If that’s the case, you need to analyze the ROI of the ‘good clicks’ that are making it through. More times than not w/ Business.com, the good clicks pay for themselves and the bad clicks in terms of ROI. The same goes for any 3rd tier search engine or vertical search engines. Watch your reports, analyze the performance and decide whether it’s a profitable venture for you. No search engine is perfect, so we advertisers have to work with what we’re given!

By: Jon Lee Clark

Jon Lee Clark — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 14:12:50 +0000

I’ve been intrigued by the opportunities surround vertical searc also, however, having gotten burned by 3rd tier search engines I am a little skeptical of the search quality. Obviously, from a branding aspect, it would be worth the test but in this economy many advertisers are so budget/ROI conscious it is more and more difficult to justify to them the test. So, you use the job-seeker example which makes sense but what about a Business.com or similar ‘vertical search’? Do you find a lot of click fraud or questionable clicks coming down the pipe?

By: Thagomizer

Thagomizer — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 06:01:02 +0000

I ran a campaign for a mining employment client of mine on google and the new vertical search engine http://www.searchmining.net. When we compared the cost and time spent in running, setting up and maintaining the campaign it was a real no brainer.

To do keyword advertising on SearchMining we just bought a bundle of keywords we wanted for a fixed cost per month.

Whilst our ad impressions were obviously far lower than our Google SEM campaign, the click through rate was 5 times higher. More importantly though was the fact that the conversion rate of those that came through to our site gave us a far higher return on investment. The targets of our campaign were to drive CV submission and job applications.

Through SearchMining we received a much higher return on investment for the marketing dollars spent and didn’t have to make any time investment in setting up and tracking the campaign as we had to in Google.

They also only let 3 people advertise against any one keyword at the same time – hence locking out our competitors was another benefit we got.

By: John

John — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 18:20:03 +0000

@ Elizabeth,

Less cost, less risk… tis the way of the world! Have you seen any particular B2B niches perform better or worse in your experience?

By: Elizabeth

Elizabeth — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 17:10:22 +0000

I’ve had some great results (and failures) with search verticals. The good news is since they cost less, the damage is minimal, but when they worked out, they really worked out. I’ve noticed it’s the B2B sites that have shown the most success for me.

By: John

John — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 21:59:30 +0000

@ Online,

Yes. There’s always going to be “another set of campaigns to monitor.” Never a dull moment! We just have to learn how to roll with the punches.

By: OnlineMediaLimited

OnlineMediaLimited — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 21:46:17 +0000

There is always going to be a need for the ‘mass market’ search engines but I think you will begin seeing a rise in the popularity of vertical SEs – from both a user perspective but also advertiser perspective.

Much in the same way vertical social networks are coming more the fore.

It just means another set of campaigns to monitor and optimise against – but like you say, its more than worth it if they are converting well enough!