It’s impossible to generalize all traffic from a certain pay per click network. What works great for one campaign can be horrible for another. Even with the same niche, one person could have great success while another totally fails.
That being said, all you can really do is look at real data gathered from certain tests to make the best determination possible. So here is one case study of nearly identical campaigns running on the big 3 PPC networks.
The campaign is for a company in the travel industry and has been running for 6 months with good volume so the data is statistically valid. It’s a relatively simple campaign going after mostly short tail keywords. About 15 adgroups with 10 keywords each. The landing pages and conversion processes are exactly the same for all.
For this particular niche, Yahoo has been out-converting the other networks. It was 14.8% higher than Bing, and 60% higher than Google. It also has the lowest cost per conversion. Google had the highest volume, followed by Yahoo and Bing.
As I said before, this is just one case study, but I have seen similar results with other campaigns. Sometimes Bing comes out higher, but either Bing or Yahoo will usually convert better than Google.
Are you seeing similar trends? Which of the big 3 convert best for your campaigns?
I’ve always had better luck with Yahoo and MSN/Bing. Sure Google will get you the traffic, but you want conversions and Yahoo and MSN/Bing is the way to go. At all my Seattle meetups I tell people always start with Yahoo, then MSN/Bing, then move to Google.
That’s good advice James.
I haven’t used Bing yet but I do use Yahoo and Google. In my experience Yahoo traffic converted with the best but the clicks were usually more expensive than Google.
Google always sent more traffic and the clicks were usually cheaper than Yahoo. The quality score with Google can be a pain at times though.
Looks like I need to give Bing a shot.
Love,
Sammie
Same results for me, Yahoo, MSN, Google. Although mine are usually pretty tight niches. Biggest problem I have is click volume is so low on MSN, also Google prices per click are a bit higher but still profitable and volume is much higher than Yahoo and MSN.
I second that comment from Eric. Sure the covnersions are better and cheaper on Y and Bing but the volume is a fraction of Google. We might make a little less money on G but wouldn’t be able to survive if we didn’t have their volume.
Word up on those results. Same results here. Also, you can put up a poo lander thru YSM/Adcenter and test things out quickly without having to ramp up with a decent site & SEO to deal with QS.
I’d be curious to see how the Google Content Network would stack up against the 3 in your experiment (I’m assuming all 3 traffic sources are Search Only). I’d venture to say that it would do better than G-search and Yahoo…
Google by a mile, but as you might guess, the volume there has allowed this testing nut to optimize a lot better.
Another really great article! Great points.
Ahhhhh DAMN !!! you just let the best kept secret out of the bag after the last bad GOOGLE SLAP!!!
Next you will be telling them how PPV is kicking as and you can direct link and make 4-5 figures a day… oh, cr*p… did I say that out loud ???
As per my observation, Google gives you the necessary exposure and its is good in respect to the SEO, however getting a step further to the clicks that converts you must look up for Yahoo and Bing.
Your graphs also states the same thing.
I have also usually had better success converting Bing/MSN & Yahoo traffic. Google obviously is going to give the most traffic, but the other search engines usually have better converting traffic. Of course this will vary slightly for different industries.
I think the case is a bit different when talking about organic traffic. Bing converts first, followed by Yahoo and Google. So even though your site may not be getting immense traffic from Bing, it is worth to optimize for top positions.
The problem I’ve found with Yahoo is that 80% of my clicks come from these parked domains which never convert. I’m talking about Yahoo Search, not content. I’ve had to get yahoo to refund a majority of my clicks because of this issue, which has prevented me from gathering any accurate data using Yahoo (unfortunately).
I hear of a lot of people having success with Yahoo, but I seem to be the only one having this issue. I currently have 400+ domains on my block list and this list grows daily….what is causing this? Is my account screwed up or something?