The Top 10 Pay-Per-Click Search Engines By Sue Doughty

"Pay-per-click" search engines charge advertisers on a per-click basis for keywords used in a search query. You are only charged if the user clicks on your link. The idea of a pay-per-click service is to bid for the top positions in order to take advantage of traffic coming to these search engines.

The top 10 pay-per-click search engines listed below are some of the major players in the industry at this time. Except for Google, these are not free search engines. I have listed them in order of their significance in terms of potential traffic. Overture and Google, are the most expensive but the others allow you to be highly competitive with your bids, thus giving you a chance to achieve a high placement in the search engines.

1. Overture.com is by far the biggest and most popular. Overture search results reach 75% of all Internet users through partnerships with AOL, Yahoo, MSN, Lycos, AltaVista and Netscape. Overture receives 2 billion search queries per month. By bidding on a top 3 position in Overture, you may find yourself paying handsomely for the keywords you want. This is because of Overture's tremendous popularity, but it can secure you a top 3 position in their entire partner sites, especially Yahoo if your bid is right.

Minimum bid: $0.05 per click. Monthly minimum spend: $20.00. Highly Recommended.

2. Google.com is a major search engine. It is not considered a pay-per-click search engine per se. You can achieve top rankings in Google using their free submission service. It is possible to achieve top positions with the diligent use of search engine optimization techniques. Google recently began a program called AdWords Select, which allows you immediate placement once you sign up and bid. They recently have partnered with AOL who is leaving Overture. Next to Yahoo, it is by far the best search engine.

All that is needed is $5.00 to open your account. Highly recommended.

3. Findwhat.com drives quality search leads to your site. Partnerships include Excite.com, Webcrawler, CNET's Search.com, MetaCrawler, Dogpile, and many others.

Minimum bid: $0.01. Monthly minimum spend: none. Highly Recommended.

4. 7Search.com has a network that covers over 700 search engines and over 35% of the top 150 search engines in English-speaking countries. According to independent traffic ranker Alexa.com, 7Search.com is the second most visited pay-per-click search engine.

Minimum bid: $0.01. Monthly minimum spend: none. Recommended.

5. AhHa.com is among the 200 fastest growing websites on the Internet and is among the top 25 search engines today. It processes 5 million searches per day and serves 10% of Internet users. There are no monthly minimums and bids start as low as $0.01. It contains highly relevant searches. Ah Ha search is also on various sites, so by advertising with them you will also be on myfamily.com (one of the feature sites on Internet Explorer), sureseeker.com, ancestry.com, thirdage.com, teen.com, various college homepages, elocal.com, momsnetwork.com, paxway.com, spinfinder.com, dogpile.com, searchhound.com and bigmama.com.

Minimum bid: $0.01. Monthly minimum spend: none. Highly Recommended.

6. Kanoodle.com has been serving pay-per-click listings for over 2 years. Currently it receives 410 million searches per month through partners like AskJeeves, Lycos, CNET, Dogpile.com, NetZero, Metacrawler.com, Mamma.com, plus 9,700 other search enabled sites.

Minimum bid: $0.01. Monthly minimum spend: none. Highly Recommended.

7. Bay9.com can drive targeted customers to your site with their pay-per-click program. Search listings are not restricted to English words, so you can bid on search terms in any language.

Minimum bid: $0.03. Monthly minimum spend: none. Recommended.

8. Brainfox.com has a primary directory that is directly derived from the DMOZ (Open Directory) project and all paid listings are offered by BrainFox's own competitive pay-per-click service.

Minimum bid: $0.001 (one tenth of one cent). Minimal Initial Deposit: $5.00. Recommended

9. Sprinks.com is a pay-per-click search engine which also provides placement on the topic specific listings at About.com Guide Sites. Minimum starting account is $100 but traffic is good here, especially if you obtain a high ranking in About.com. Sprinks is the only pay-per-click engine to offer placement within high-traffic content-based pages of top Internet properties like About.com.

Minimum keyword bid: $0.05. Minimum Content Sprinks bid: $0.20. Recommended.

10. GoClick.com handles over 40 million targeted searches per month.

Minimum bid: $0.01. Minimum monthly spend: none. Recommended

There are many more pay-per-click search engines in the USA and Internationally, but I have only listed 10 here. The above information is not guaranteed to be accurate or complete and may change at any time.

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Sue Doughty is the Marketing Director of Studio1 Design and Hosting and has over 15 years experience in her field. Her advice has helped many businesses achieve success on the Internet. Visit Studio1 Design and Hosting on the Web at http://www.studio1webdesign.com, email info@studio1webdesign.com or phone toll-free (888) 414-2390.