The biggest difference that separates Overture from other search engines is that you can bid on certain search words or phrases. You only pay based on how many times your link is clicked when someone searches for a particular word on which you have made a bid. This is ultimate in targeted advertising. You are setting price you are willing to pay to get a customer to your website. Chances are, anyone who clicks on your link has an interest in what your site is offering.Another great feature of Overture is ability to see how often a certain word or phrase is searched in a given month. This is a great way to help identify keywords that are important to your site. Often you will see keywords listed that you never would have thought of using. You can find how often words are searched by going to
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
Here's how it works:
Type in phrase 'home business opportunity' without quotes. You'll see how many times phrase was searched for most recent month in which they have available data.
Now, type overture.com into your browser and enter 'home business opportunity' without quotes as your search term. You will see what each person is paying to receive traffic for this keyword. Every time someone clicks on his link from that search, it costs owner of that link whatever price they have bid.
There's a trick to getting cost effective advertising at Overture. Here's secret. Go to the page I listed above that lets you see how many times a keyword or phrases were searched. Type in your keyword. You will get a list showing that term and possibly a few hundred related search terms. Print this page and keep it. Repeat this process for all your important keywords. You'll immediately notice that top keywords have a lot of searches per month and total numbers drop off quickly from thousands to hundreds and all way down to words that may only get 8 or 9 searches per month.