Hello, has anyone had any experiences with the PPC engine from Findwhat? I am evaluating it this week, and have been less than impressed with the results. I did some research on them and the reviews are decent, however 90% the traffic I am seeing is coming from junk sites (coolwebsearch type sites) and the visitors are gone quicker than they came in.
The landing page has seen good results from web directories and Adwords.

Anybody else have experience to share about this PPC engine?

I have given up on FW.

In terms of "general" PPC search traffic, Google, Overture (Yahoo) and Findwhat are the few more established players - with Google and Overture controlling most of the market.

Findwhat has a Alexa of 1569, compare it to Yahoo (1) or Google (3) or Ask Jeeves (90) and you'll have a clearer picture of their respective traffic volume.

It's not nessecarily the volume that is the problem with findwhat. They can eat up a small budget in matter of minutes.
It is the quality of the clicks that is the problem. Almost 100% of the clicks are 1 page and out, when Google/Overture are providing much longer stays to the same landing page.

Well, if that's your experience, I think that says it all, and I thank you for the feedback you gave us.

Concentrate on Google Adwords and Overture. It won't help you much if someone else has had a good experience, as they would not share their techniques/keywords anyway. :)

Unfortunately, FindWhat isn't a very good search engine for the web hosting industry.

There are some of the comments we've gotten from their advertisers:

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Waste of time and money (Rating: 2)
written by: Ross (http://www.legitonlinejobs.com) on 04/04/05
Findwhat was the first PPC engine I used. I used it when I first started out and didn't know much about how to properly market for PPC. So I kept spending money and improved my ads. But eventually I realized it wasn't so much my inexperienced marketing skills, but the low quality traffic of FindWhat. They do provide a fair amount of traffic, but what good is traffic if its useless. I've tried promoting 5 completely different types of websites and none turned any profit. There was really nothing much wrong with the sites, as they were good deals and the user knew what they were getting before clicking. Even worse, their account features are pretty bad and lacking. If you want lots of ppc traffic for fairly good prices, then they're recommended. If you want quality traffic or real sales, however (which is what most people would want) look elsewhere, like Overture. I've spent $200 with FindWhat and made about $50, not as bad as others, but nevertheless, too much. If you were wondering what types of sites i was promoting, they were web hosting, media downloads, work at home, casino and adult content.

Low Conversions (Rating: 2)
written by: Captains Free Casinos (http://www.captains-free-casinos.com) on 11/30/04
Click Fraud has been growing over the past 4 years that I have been purchasing ppc ads. In my opinion you will only receive aprox. 10% real visitors to your sites. This shrinks roi to a unacceptable level.

FindWhat delivered traffic, but virtually no sales (Rating: 6)
written by: Connie Shelton (http://www.condells.com) on 11/13/04
FindWhat delivered traffic, but virtually no sales. It may be the way the campaigns were set up. Also, it may have to do with the industry. Most people say it is worthless. Others say they have had good conversions rates from Findwhat. The ones who have found Findwhat valuable are in the minority. But the difference in success and failure with FindWhat may be the market area or the way the campaign is set up.

With Findwhat I might spend $200.00 to get a $100.00 order and in my experience that is pretty typical of all the PPC except Adwords, and Overture.
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Boris

From my own personal experience, it does take a while to get traffic compared to Google or Overture due to the volume issue. You'll have to note that people on any search engine are searching more of britney spears or other general consumer terms compared to web hosting ... so with a smaller volume it can take a while longer (compared to the big boys) but not impossible.

We are paid more then $1500 in Findwhat/Kanoodle/Ah-Ha.com (former) PPC clicks for keywords like "web hosting" - $0 return

Overture and Yahoo - sometimes 100-200% ROI