Does anyone have experience using google or any other search engine for advertising? I cannot comprehend how they calculate per-click costs, or whether such advertising is worth the expense.

Yes, Adwords is the first PPC account I'd recommend that most businesses should open and the last one to close. If you have a 5c click then you won't pay more than 5c, but you might pay less; say, you have left the account at default settings and a Content partner site brings you a click.

Your monthly budget is precisely that, so the daily spend could exceed the notional daily budget, but it catches up and you are not billed more than the desired budget.

The ranking of ads is based on the maximum cost per click times the click through ratio, so simply bidding high is not always a good policy. If your ads are not appealing, the CTR will be low and the good 5c ads will rank above your not-so-appealing 10c ads.

There is a lot to be learnt in Google PPC, as this engine has the greatest number of options. By contrast, Overture is a no brainer - pay more and rank higher. But with all PPCSEs, you could attract the wrong clicks because your ad was misleading.

Ash

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