
Ryan Gardner
Jeff Gardner
You might recognize them as the right column, or yellow-highlighted portions, of a Google search. Here, it's basically a separate set of results, independent of the normal ranking factors. The top results are generally stacked by who will pay the most at a constant "auction" marketplace. In some search engines, you'll find paid listings mixed with the "natural" listings, or even not shown at all. The Google Search Network provides advertisers with the greatest reach of any PPC network as it includes Google, Youtube, AOL, and other second tier search engines.
By now most people are familiar with seeing "Ads by Google" (now just "Ads" or not labeled at all) boxes on your favorite website. Rather than buying space on a search engine's results, you're buying space on relevant pages. While the sorting is still based keywords, the matching logic is different. Since the customer is not directly providing a keyword, ads are generally matched by a computer analysis of the page's subject matter. In general, content PPC is cheaper since it reaches users who are less actively seeking a link, and matching tends to be fuzzier.
Pay per click advertising gives website owners the chance to turn an immediate profit from search engine traffic. Google's Adwords and Microsoft's AdCenter each operate on the same fundamental premise: advertisers create ads and bid on keywords they want their ad to appear on.
Every time a visitor enters a search term an invisible auction takes place on Google's servers. Google determines which advertiser appears based on a formula weighting the advertisers maximum bid against their ad's Quality Score. The auction's winner has their ad appear above the organic listings and is charged only if a visitor clicks on it. This is generally referred to as the Cost Per Click (CPC) of the ad.
Pay-Per-Click can be a risky game to do yourself. There are some important skills to getting it right:
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