What Yahoo and MSN Bring To The Table.

Besides Google, Yahoo and MSN are the two other major pay-per-click search engine providers.  Yahoo has around 20% of search traffic and MSN has around 5%.  This is compared to Google's 60%.

The reason Google dominates is because they're always innovating.  They're not after what's going to make them the most amount of money in the shortest amount of time.  They develop powerful features and tools that may not always generate any revenue in the short term.  More often than not, they end-up becoming popular and Google benefits later on.

Examples include when Google Analytics first came-out, their website optimizer, and their Google AdSense program.  They were also the first to consider other factors in determining what paid ads rank high besides just who pays the most per click.

Yahoo and MSN always seem to play catch-up.  When they do, their tools or upgrades usually pale in comparison to Google's.  Though, there are occasional exceptions.

This may lead advertisers to ignore the other two.  Often, this can be a major mistake.  Depending on your market, they might provide BETTER quality traffic than Google.

Why is this the case?

If you head over to Yahoo and MSN, you'll notice something.  They do a good job of providing quality articles, resources, and other content.  These visitors then are likely to make searches on the current site they're on (either Yahoo or MSN).  All of these visitors are currently looking for information.  There does not seem to be an apparent reason why they are not as good or even higher quality than Google's.  

The only difference is Yahoo and MSN might have far less of a certain type of searcher.  But, because of the content or the userbases they have, in certain markets, they could have much more traffic than you might expect.

In addition to having good quality traffic, Yahoo and MSN also may have less competition.  Advertisers may find Google a lot easier to use and ignore Yahoo and MSN.  Plus, if they do use MSN and Yahoo, then they might not put a lot of focus on them.  You can then come-in and clean-up.

Of course, the downside of these services is that they tend to not be as "User-friendly."  They might not have all of the advertiser-friendly features you're used to with Google.  Though, this might be a minor complaint.

A good way to think of Yahoo and MSN might be as the final two pieces to the search marketing puzzle.  Google is the biggest piece, but you need the other two to complete it.  One of those missing pieces might be very important to the overall picture.