Let’s do a little math. If you figure there are 100 people competing to sell 1 product on Google. Let’s assume there’s 100 sales created, 1 sale per person selling it. Since Google makes up 75% of search lets say it also is 75% of the sales, so there would be a total of 133 sales. Of the 100 people competing on Google, about 25 would most likely be advertising on the other search engines. So that 33 sales will be split among 25 people, so greater than 1 sale per person. Therefore making more $ per advertiser. Are these hard figures? No, they are based on several years of SEM experience and from conversations I’ve had with many people in the industry. Google tends to cost more per click (Yahoo is expensive too), and other places are far cheaper.

The real lesson for this do not count out the other search engines, play with them if you are going to do PPC. I ran a campaign on Yahoo, Google and Ask. My least competitive market was Ask, and my lowest CPC was Ask, and guess what my highest conversion was Ask.

So just take a look at everything else around you. Google is great, but when you’re trying to sell remember do not overlook any possible customers.