Google Adwords is the most popular Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising on the Internet and although Yahoo and Bing also provide PPC advertising most small business use Google exclusively.

If you llok at the search engine listings for a typical search you usually find the SERPS (search engine results page) divided as shown below:

And here is how it appears on Google:

Targeted Advertising

 They also increasing provide more sophisticated targeting mechanisms like:

• Country
• State or city
• Time of day, day of week
• demographic

Who Uses Google Adwords and Why?

Many small businesses from restaurants to consultants use Google adwords to bring potential customers to their site as it:

• Is a reliable traffic source
• Can be turned on and off instantly.
• Doesn't require that your site is indexed and ranked by Google.
• Doesn't require that your site is optimized.

In contrast free or organic traffic require that:

• You have a search engine optimised site
• You can wait for the traffic to build as i can take least several weeks to typically several months, and even years before the site gets organic traffic.

Many new sites use Google Adwords to get traffic while their site gets optimized and has time to rank in the search engines and hence receive free organic traffic. After which they have the option of stopping the Adwords traffic or continuing depending on the profitability.

Starting With Google Adwords

Google Adwords can be difficult for new advertisers to grasp and although Google make it as easy as possible to get started they also make it easy for you to spend lots of money on unproductive advertising.

I would caution any newcomers to make themselves familiar with Google Adwords before they start advertising and not simply to learn as they go.

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