Make MoneyWith Shane Woods

Pay Per Click (PPC) is a form of advertising used by search engines and content websites such as blogs. When it started in 1998 by Jeffrey Brewer of Goto.com it was just a concept yet to proove itself. Google started search engine advertising in 1999 and in 2000 AdWords hit the web, allowing advertisers to create text ads for inclusion on the search engine. They followed with PPC as we know it today in 2002. Until then advertisements were always charged at ‘cost per thousand impressions CPM’.

It’s still an affordable method of advertising and can help customers find websites that carry the products or services they want. The Advertisers bid on keywords and can select which ones to use and their estimated budget. How much you want to spend depends on how many impressions of your ad are shown. There is a lot of secrecy around the top keywords and large companies are keen to keep these close to their chest and will pay highly for the privilege. If Google AdWords doesn’t suit your budget don’t forget Yahoo! and other engines such as Ask.

It didn’t take long for click fraud to develop, as competitors realised the potential in damaging another’s business by clicking repeatedly on their ad in the hope they would pay out unecessarily. In order to prevent invalid clicks, on their AdSense Help Center page, Google responded with,

‘Our specialists carefully monitor clicks and impressions on Google ads in order to protect your interests as well as those of our advertisers. To do this, we use both automated systems and human reviews, analyzing all ad clicks and impressions for any invalid click activity that may artificially drive up an advertiser’s costs or a publisher’s earnings.

Our system enables us to filter out most invalid clicks and impressions, and our advertisers are not charged for this activity.

In addition to our automated system, we have a team dedicated to detecting invalid activity using several specialized tools and a wide variety of techniques based on extensive experience tracking and monitoring user behavior and analyzing scenarios. We continually upgrade our detection mechanisms to proactively combat invalid activity.’

The difference with PPC as opposed to general search rankings is that it is possible to be at the top if you spend more, although it is not important as people do generally click on the majority of the ads displayed. If a keyword is not working out for you, Google doesn’t automatically pull the ad or ask you to change it so you need to keep track of progress and click through rates. If done properly, PPC can be a worthwhile advertising avenue.