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Posted on: October 1, 2007 by Syzlak Comments

3rd Tier Search Results

Posted on: October 1, 2007 by Syzlak Comments

Hey Reader!

Remember that post on 3rd Tier Search i did a while back? Well, here’s a short writeup on the results! Nothing unexpected happened, as the search engines were held well in check.

3rd Tier Search Review

The Players: Enhance, Miva and ABCSearch.

Metrics: Cost Efficiency, Traffic and ROI.

From our test we have been able to gather some interesting teachings on cost efficiency and traffic. When properly controlled, 3rd tier search engines are a relatively cheap source of traffic. Their limited scope helps to keep costs down, while providing an alternative to the mainstream online audience (Google, Yahoo).

After examining the traffic, we see some encouraging trends. The 3rd tier engines performed as we wanted. They delivered low volume of traffic and we incurred no spikes in traffic. Although we cannot analyze the traffic with 100% accuracy, we can make some assumptions as to its quality. Since we did not see any spikes in traffic, we can assume that the engines delivered the results to qualified sites. We can also assume that the traffic was legitimate, as we saw what appeared to be quality website referrals.

While none of the campaigns resulted in conversions, we can see the potential of employing a properly managed campaign on 3rd tier engines. With such little traffic being delivered and little cost incurred, a strong ROI would be easily achieved with just a few sales.

3rd tier search engines offer a distinct opportunity for branding campaigns. Due to their alternate audience, 3rd tier search offers the ability to expand the online market. Instead of competing for position on Google and Yahoo, one can be a top advertiser in 3rd tier engines.

While we only received nominal amounts of traffic from Enhance, our campaigns in Miva were rather successful from a traffic standpoint. Miva slowly increased its traffic share over the course of 13 weeks, and has recently performed at a consistent level of roughly 4 visits/day. As we will not continue to advertise on the 3rd tier engines after this test has run its course ($150 budget depletion), we have raised our bids in Miva and Enhance for further testing.