Search Engine Management

Pay Per Click (PPC) is an Inter­net adver­tis­ing model used on web­sites, in which adver­tis­ers pay their host only when their ad is clicked. With search engines, adver­tis­ers typ­i­cally bid on key­word phrases rel­e­vant to their tar­get mar­ket. Con­tent sites com­monly charge a fixed price per click rather than use a bid­ding system.

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Cost per click (CPC) is the amount of money an adver­tiser pays search engines and other Inter­net pub­lish­ers for a sin­gle click on its adver­tise­ment that brings one vis­i­tor to its website.

In con­trast to the gen­er­al­ized por­tal, which seeks to drive a high vol­ume of traf­fic to one site, PPC imple­ments the so-called affil­i­ate model, that pro­vides pur­chase oppor­tu­ni­ties wher­ever peo­ple may be surf­ing. It does this by offer­ing finan­cial incen­tives (in the form of a per­cent­age of rev­enue) to affil­i­ated part­ner sites. The affil­i­ates pro­vide purchase-point click-through to the mer­chant. It is a pay-for-performance model: If an affil­i­ate does not gen­er­ate sales, it rep­re­sents no cost to the mer­chant. Vari­a­tions include ban­ner exchange, pay-per-click, and rev­enue shar­ing programs.

Web­sites that uti­lize PPC ads will dis­play an adver­tise­ment when a key­word query matches an advertiser’s key­word list, or when a con­tent site dis­plays rel­e­vant con­tent. Such adver­tise­ments are called spon­sored links or spon­sored ads, and appear adja­cent to or above organic results on search engine results pages, or any­where a web devel­oper chooses on a con­tent site.

Although many PPC providers exist, Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Mar­ket­ing, and Microsoft adCen­ter are the three largest net­work oper­a­tors, and all three oper­ate under a bid-based model. Cost per click (CPC) varies depend­ing on the search engine and the level of com­pe­ti­tion for a par­tic­u­lar keyword.