When Trellian, the parent company of Keyword Discovery, launched their new Direct Search Network, I was a little skeptic at first as I did not truly understand the scope of it. However, as I started to read more into it, I realized that it’s not getting the attention it truly deserves in the PPC Industry. The bottom line is that even though this platform is completely different from traditional PPC, it does provide another outlet for PPC Marketers to test something new on a rather small dollar investment. Furthermore, from what I am hearing, Trellian is also going to be adding more and more “bells and whistles” in future releases, which will make it more user friendly. So, without further adieu, I will walk you through some of the basics of Direct Search.
Trellian Direct Search Quick Bits:
- The Trellian Direct Search Network opening bid price is on average 70% less than major search engines’ CPC (Cost Per Click).
- Research has shown that Direct Navigation converts 50% greater than traditional search engines.
- Trellian Direct Search Network has direct access to 200 million unique visitors per month, that can be redirected to your website.
- The network includes domains parked with the Above.com platform that are authorized to redirect to advertisers.
- Offers Traditional Bidding Auction
- Supports Negative Keywords to filter out irrelevant traffic.
- Their Billing system supports PayPal and Credit Cards.
- You can add keywords to your Trellian Direct Search account directly from a Keyword Discovery search result
Why Consider Using It?
According to Trellian, research shows that Direct Navigation converts 50% greater because users are presented with a website that is highly relevant to their search, without the need to click on any ads. Furthermore, independent studies done by Mozilla and UCLA confirmed that direct navigation is a major part of the web user experience. So with that said, the biggest difference that Direct Search provides is that the direct navigators behave differently to traditional search engine users. Direct navigators are intent driven searchers. Also, it’s important to note that Direct Search taps into a pocket of internet “searchers” not reached by the traditional search engines. Since Direct Search bypasses search engines completely it provides a new untapped source of a potential customer. Because traffic is re-directed the advertiser has NO organic or paid competition.
How does it work?
Direct Search Network has access to Internet searchers using the navigation bar (address bar) and redirects unique visitors directly to your website. Trellian Direct Search has direct access to 200 million unique visitors per month, that can be redirected to your specified website.
What’s the Bidding Auction Like?
There is no fancy bidding algorithm here. For example, if you’re max bid is $2.00 and a competitor is bidding for position #1 for $1.50, then you would be paying $1.51 per visitor. So in essence, you will only pay $0.01 (one cent) more than the highest bidder. This is a simply easy to use bid manager tool.
How do the Keywords Work?
Direct Search uses both a standard broad matching, and exact match for all keywords. And they do support Negative Keywords. For example if you place the word “Blog” as a Negative Keyword associated with the broad match term PPC, then the “PPC Blog” Broad Matched term will not show up (PPC -blog).
What does Google/Yahoo Bing Offer that Direct Search Does NOT?
- Currently does not Support domain extensions as a negative, say -.fr to exclude French domain names.
- Currently does not support GEO Targeting, however Trellian is telling us that they will have this enabled in a future release.
- Only supports Broad Match Keywords, however provides ability to add negatives keywords. …Since we also support exact is this necessary.
- There is no fancy algorithm, just a traditional bid auction.
In Conclusion:
Yes, Direct Search is quite different from Google and Yahoo/Bing. However, a viable compliment to your current PPC campaigns. Just because it’s different doesn’t mean it not worth trying. In fact, putting aside a few hundred bucks for testing on the platform is not a bad strategy considering the low CPCs and traffic “sample size”. From my experience with Direct Search, I have seeing tons of low cost traffic and the CPCs across multiple campaigns are anywhere from 0.02 to $0.20 Cost per visitor.
To learn more about Trellian’s Direct Search, here are some useful links:
