How do you get listed at the top of search engines? Pay up

How much would you pay for someone to visit your Web site? That’s a question worth pondering given the growing popularity of paying for search-engine placement. Many search engines populate the top of their results–as well as other positions on the page–with listings for Web sites that have paid for such placement. You can submit your site or specific search terms relevant to your site to companies like Overture, LookSmart, FindWhat, and others. They, in turn, supply a listing for your site to the search engines they partner with, and, when a consumer clicks on your listing, charge you for that click-through.

For example, Overture provides its top three listings for each search term to Yahoo!, MSN, Netscape, AltaVista, and other sites’ search engines. This puts your listing in front of 85% of Internet users, according to the aggregate Nielsen/NetRatings from January 2002. And the way to get into the top three is to bid more per click-through than other advertisers on a search term. That amount can vary quite a bit, depending on the term: The number-three bid for the term Dallas homes for sale (as of press time) was $1.99 per click-through, while the third listing on San Antonio homes for sale was 18 cents. If your bid places you below third place, your listing is provided to sites seen by about 40% of Internet users. Overture verifies that a search term is relevant to the activity on a site, and will even, for a fee, make recommendations on search terms that will yield the best results. You can see current bids on any search by visiting Overture.com.

Other services offer variations, such as a set fee per click-through and paid placement on content pages. Most companies have minimum monthly charges and initial deposits.

Though some people may bristle at the idea of paying for what once was free, others see it as just another type of advertising buy. The strengths of this type of ad spending are that you can track visitor activity on your site by people delivered from paid-placement searches and determine, based on their activity, how much to spend per visitor; you do not pay for people who don’t see your ad or even for those who read your listing but don’t click on it; and you can narrowly target the types of visitors you want to your site based on the search terms you submit.

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