Currently and for the past couple of months, I’ve spent most of my “search” dollars with Yahoo! because it gets me into CNN’s search results. Of course, if MSNBC got their ads from MSN’s deal, I’d up my budget with them and for the record: For the past couple of months, I’ve stuck to Google’s non-search ads (the adsense boxes) because they are more willing to take a lower price and it gets me onto small-town newspapers and television stations.

While the auction format does have some effect on price, when there’s several people vying for the same keywords, but they also let their computers decide “relevance” and that can have a bigger effect on price.

Perhaps it’s not as great a factor for the big sites because they may be getting some special consideration, but I’ve been buying newsy keywords to promote a couple of my current events sites. In one instance, I was happily paying >.20 per click for a few hours, only to find that the price jumped because though a phrase was relevant, it didn’t appear on the page with the two words side-by-side. So, I added the phrase as it appears and the price went back down to a reasonable level.

And in another instance, once again with Google, I bought a keyword well in advance of a scheduled event and though no one else was advertising on the phrase (except for Google’s gimme to a non-profit, which was added after I had bought the phrase); Over the course of the week prior to the event, the price kept creeping-up, though I remained the only advertiser on that particular phrase.

Also, as the search marketers will all tell you, the “price” is actually the most that you’re willing to pay and that most words come out less, sometimes by a large margin and Yahoo!, though they don’t exclude you if you’re not willing to bid the max, an agreeable bid will often get you on the first page, anyhow.

But, yeah, not only have I noticed the plethora of news outlets buying words, but I’ve also been buying them myself because they do generate traffic. Unfortunately though, I’ve really cut back on my Google buys because it’s just too much work to stay on top of their constant opinions of “relevance” and whenever their machines make a judgement on the subject, the “price” only goes up.

i’m happy to see the early signs that some locals are finding value in a sort of geographic branding strategy for “$5 per click” is simply out of the question.

some of these were ones who had previously eschewed the idea too.