Second tier search engines are commonly defined as any search engine that draws less than 10% of the search traffic. I define second tier search engines as search engines other than Google, Yahoo and MSN. Even though they are such a small part of the entire search volume they still can be a useful tool when running your PPC campaign. Here are some of my tips that I can suggest to use the second tier:
Test, test and then test some more- I can not stress this enough, take a small sample of campaigns and ad groups that work on the big three and try them out on the 2nd tier network. Run them for a week, if you get bad traffic (clicks with only one page view) yank the campaign. If you measure online success through a conversion metric (online sales, phone call, or other desired behavior) track your cost per conversion (amount spent divided by the number of conversion) and will determine the worth of the traffic. There are a lot of second tier engines out there, don’t be afraid to pull the entire PPC spend from that engine if you are not getting the desired results.
Develop relationships with your account reps- Just how we manage relationships with our clients we do the same with all of our search engine account reps. I have found that there is a lot more negotiation that can take place in regards to refunds, billing and account maintenance. Almost all second tier search engines will accept Adwords Editor .csv files for bulk upload. Their willingness to create your campaigns for you is based on the relationship and how much you spend with them! Work with the people you like, don’t work with pushy reps that align their sales strategies with used car salesmen.
Spend as little time as possible working on 2nd Tier Campaigns- The second tier will almost never deliver the quality of traffic that the big three does, so don’t expect to find a second Google. Second tier engines should only be used to supplement your first tier traffic, quite honestly a lot of time on the second tier is a waste. Spend the majority of your time working with the first tier engines, it will always payoff more.
The second tier search engines often go ignored, however, to maximize your performance they can be a great asset in your PPC tool box.
Tags: PPC · Search Engines · second tier · tier 22 Comments
Found this article when searching on the big G for second tier traffic. Wondering if you have tested and would recommend any specific second tier search site (ie which one worked best). Interested in North Americian traffic. Thanks.
I would total disagree with this article. My ROI is MUCH greater with the second tier search engines. It’s just a numbers game anway. There’s no way Google customers are more ready to buy than any other customers on the internet. This article must have been written by someone associated with Google or Yahoo… It’s completely false!