I've been a Google Adwords guy for about 3 years, and have gotten referrals and sales from my ads. It's not cheap ($2-400/every 3 weeks), but I'd say I nearly break even. I just signed up for adcenter.msn.com when I saw an ad for a higher conversion on MSN.

So far, I'm seeing a 1.15% impression to click ratio versus .76% for Google. It's a bit more pricey I think, even after 4 days. Any experiences you can share? I've gotten a few signups on my website, but have not yet found out if they were a result of msn or google.

Yeah those adwords can be costly. I recently built my own site and it is now ranked on the first page of MSN search engine for the key words Utah Realtors & Utah Realtor.
My only advice would be to work on getting your site ranked high for certain key word phrases through search engine optimization so you would not have to pay for the adwords. If this helps at all you can contact me for more info.

KansasCityKWAgent:

Your problem isn't the marketing medium or vendor, it's your ads and thus your return. My Google all-time percentage of CTR (click thru ratio) is about 4.5%. My revenue is 11 times my ad expense.
My Yahoo/Overture CTR is around 6%.

You need to look at your ads and see what you're offering from the perspective of the searcher. You're not getting nearly enough of them to click through, thus only breaking even.

I am a Google Certified Adwords Professional, but I am not looking for accounts to manage.

My site has been on the first page of MSN for the past three months (generally #1) strictly by playing around with link exchanges and content. It took four months to get to this point. About 20 people a month use my site to search for properties (is increasing)and I get a text message as soon as somebody signs on. I check my Google and Yahoo standings every week or so and I'm slowly moving up with them too, but it will take longer. I haven't spent a cent in placement fees. My site also tells me which search engines my customers are using.

DaveE
Winter Park, FL Realtor
http://www.davesellswinterpark.com

I'm just getting started with SEO for my own site. I was spending a small budget on PPC but I wanted to test how much traffic I would get without it so I turned it off early July. I am number one on google for "Terry Hoffman" out of several million results and number one for "charleston sc and surrounding areas." I have a consumer blog at www.terryisyouragent and an industry blog at www.terryhoffman.net that I just started. The sites are indexed and have links between them. I really think content is key, both in attracting and keeping visitors to your site, promoting yourself as an expert on your market and scoring well in the search engines. Otherwise it is simply an issue of who has the most instances of a certain key word on a page.

If you are at the top of Google you will get more traffic than MSN. However, the fight to get to the top can be more difficult. About 8 months ago I set out for the top of Google for "Las Vegas Realtor", for http://www.hildrethhome.com/. So far, we toggle between 11 and 13. Google really relies on credibility as well as relevance. We are surfacing for our new site http://www.greatlasvegasproperty.com/ for many unfocused keywords. It's sure fun to get those clients who say, "can we list with you this week?" off of a web site phone call.

Google is a more popular search engine and much harder to get ranked. That is awesome that you were able to get ranked well in just 8 months. It does feel good to get leads from your site, it shows that the SEO has paid off. Congrats and good luck with your new site.

Google is by far the superior search engine. They used to provide search data to the other search engines. Clearly they have been in the business longer and have developed superior ranking algorithms. SEO is different from adwords, and I'd suggest looking at your keywords and analyze them based on what people are actually searching for. There are different methods for analyzing your keywords.
Adwords gives you traffic to your website immediately, but you are limited to your monthly expense. Properly SEO will get you high in the rankings and will not limit your traffic.

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Twelve Seas SEO

Fraser Pogue

I'm a believer in both , I've worked on SEO since I got into real estate (4 months ago) and I'm ranked on MSN #1 for the keywords I wanted , as for Google and Yahoo, i'm floating around there somewhere , and my PPC picks up for those. Right now , 1/2 of what i get is from PPC and the other half is from SEO , Both have got me business , but the SEO was free due to my playing around with content and 'stuff' for a month. So far , this month hasn't been too bad on google/yahoo.