In the Czech Republic, search advertising happens almost exclusively on Google. The budget, the keywords, and the tracking all go there, and the other search engine Czechs use, Seznam, gets left on the sidelines. Rarely because of the numbers. Mostly because nobody wants to open yet another interface and learn its rules.
I hear it in consultations over and over: “Sklik? We tried that once, and nothing came of it.” When I ask a few more questions, it turns out the campaign in Sklik (Seznam’s ad platform) ran for a month, was copied from Google, and nobody looked at it in the meantime.
What matters is where your customers search, not market share
Overall search engine market share is almost useless for your decision. Only one thing matters: whether the people who buy from you also search on Seznam. That varies by industry, by region, and by age.
Sklik
Seznam’s ad system. Ads appear in search results and on partner Czech websites, including news sites. You pay per click, and campaigns are set up much like in Google Ads. But the similarity ends at the principle. Sklik has its own auction, its own audience, and its own way of handling Czech.
For local services, trades, and everyday consumer goods, Seznam tends to be at home. For specialist terms, English expressions, and purchases that businesses make, the volume just isn’t there. Either way, you need to check rather than guess.
Luckily, checking is cheap. Take ten to twenty words your customers use to find you and look at how often they’re searched on Seznam. If most of them show zero, you have your answer, and you’ve saved yourself the budget and the disappointment. Only if there’s volume is it worth thinking about a campaign.
A second search engine is about how many of your customers make up their minds somewhere you’re not looking, not about its market share.
How to tell whether Sklik is worth a try
Four things have to be true at once, or the test won’t tell you anything. You sell in the Czech Republic, and more to consumers than to businesses. Customers find you using everyday Czech words, not technical jargon. You already have a Google campaign that brings in real inquiries, so you know what works. And the cost per click there is starting to squeeze you.
Before you put any money in, the page you send people to has to be able to capture an inquiry. Ideally, a submitted form should go straight to wherever you process it. Without that, you’re measuring clicks, not customers.
One-minute self-test
Open your website traffic report and see which search engines people come from. How many of them came from Seznam without you spending anything on it? That number is your free hint. If your customers are already there on their own, a paid test has something to build on.
You no longer have to learn a second interface
The biggest obstacle with Sklik has always been one more system someone has to keep an eye on, rather than the price. That’s exactly what changed over the past year. You can create and edit campaigns with plain-language instructions, and the results line up next to Google’s in one overview with the same columns.
The morning check then looks different from what you’re used to. Nobody clicks through two interfaces or exports two spreadsheets. A summary arrives that shows what moved and what’s waiting for a decision. It’s the same principle as with work that runs overnight.
That also removes the main reason a second channel usually never gets set up: the upkeep, which was always the real issue, more than the budget. Once watching a campaign no longer costs an extra hour a day, you can compare what each channel brings in. And that’s a decision based on numbers, not on who happens to have time.
Scheduled routine
Work that starts by itself at a set time, without me. For ads, it’s the morning check: it compares yesterday against thresholds I set in advance and flags whatever got out of hand. It doesn’t switch anything off by itself. It just puts the decision in front of me, along with the supporting data. Watching the account turns into reading one summary.
How much to put in so it tells you something
You run a test to get an answer, not revenue. You need enough clicks for the difference between a good and a bad variant to show up at all, plus a few weeks. If you don’t have the budget for that, don’t run the test at all. Three days and roughly €4 won’t tell you anything, and you’ll take it as a verdict.
Czech also has a life of its own here, much like when you localize a foreign system into Czech. With broad match, Sklik handles declension and missing diacritics by itself. With negative keywords, though, it’s strict about them, so you need to add those without diacritics too. It’s a small thing that can quietly eat through your budget.
And then there’s one thing without which you’re judging the test by gut feeling. Every channel needs its own link that tells you where a person came from. Otherwise, the credit for an order goes to whoever came last, and that’s usually Google.
Who this isn’t worth it for
Who won’t get anything out of it? Specialist services and B2B work with narrow search terms. Such queries are searched on Seznam so rarely that you won’t learn anything from the results. The same goes for anyone who sells mainly abroad.
It also makes no sense if you don’t yet have a Google campaign that reliably brings in inquiries. A second channel will never fix what isn’t working in the first. It just spreads the problem across two accounts, and the cause gets harder to find.
The whole process in a nutshell
- I check whether Seznam already sends visits without any paid ads.
- I pick only what demonstrably brings in inquiries on Google.
- I rebuild the campaign with Czech logic instead of copying it.
- I give it a budget and a few weeks so it has time to give an answer.
- I read the results next to Google’s in the same table and decide based on that.
Let’s go back to that line from my consultations: “We tried it, and nothing came of it.” Almost always, behind it is a campaign someone copied from Google and didn’t look at for a month. A second search engine is a different channel with a different audience rather than a weaker version of the first, and that’s why it deserves its own brief.
