Any publishers here that have used both Yahoo and Google on their sites?

I'd like to hear opinions.

I'm currently using Ads by Yahoo! and am pretty happy with it... revenue is very strong!

I'm still experimienting with their ad categories and subcategories to see what works well and what doesnt.. (Yahoo allows you to specify categories to display on your site in addition to the contextual ads)

Anyone have any first hand experience with this stuff? If you havev a moment, take a look at my sites (see sig below) and offer any advice that may help with my revenue

thanks!

I prefer Yahoo over Google for a simple reason. Yahoo allows for much better targeted sponsored search. For instance, a very competitve term for our industry is "cd rates". I've seen bids as high as $5.00. On Yahoo, I can target "california cd rates" and not have to pay as high to even show up and show up near the top at that. It doesn't receive near the traffic, but I can target many less competitive terms to make up some of the difference.

On Google, the higher bidding term wins out, so in our case the more targeted less expensive key words don't even show up. I don't blame them from a financial stand point, they make $5.00 as opposed to $0.25, but Yahoo seems to put the searchers intentions above the PPC.

Also, know your demographic. Our demographic is generally older folks and most of them don't use Google so it hasn't been as big a deal for us to miss out on some of the Google traffic.

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CD Rates | CD Rates Blog | Banking Online

I think it depends what you're selling Chris.
I agree that there's a massive difference in price between a Google ad and a Yahoo/Overture ad but there's also a huge difference in traffic.
In my field the phrase 'Bespoke Suit' would cost £1.20 a click to be top of the pile on Google but only 25p on Yahoo.
However for that money I would get 15 clicks a day (just on that keyword) as oppose to about 2 or 3 from Yahoo.
I've also noticed when speaking to clients that 99.9% of the ones who actually buy a suit from me found me on Google.
This tells me that the Yahoo surfers are only browsing.
That could be the age thing though. Perhaps my clients are just not Yahoo or MSN users?

www.jasperlittman.co.uk

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To me there is No Comparison as I have used both and by far and I mean by Far Google is the one to go with.

I have strong evidence to back this up....

I ran yahoo ads on a site for several months with about the same CTR of .05-2% This would generate about 13.00 a day most of the times less.

I switched over about 1/2 of the pages to Google and began making 2 times yahoo rate and at the same time yahoo was staying the same.. Now figure this take 1/2 the pages out and Google does 2 times Yahoo but at the same time yahoo stays the same money clicks and %CTR.... This leads me to believe we aren't getting a good count on traffic we are sending..

What am I saying yahoo is stealing You be the judge I have switched the site over to Google and now doing 4 times the money and 11% CTR....

Why are they so far apart you tell me I already know the answer.....

Google is the way to go until yahoo gets it together I am not going use them at all....

Site has gone from 2-13 a day to 50 a day

Yahoo Stats for a week for the same week as Google Below
Date

$4.65
$13.45
$7.65
$4.00
$0.99
$15.93
-------
45.00 added in head remember not

Google Stats for a week as Yahoo above
$266.43

You add up the money but remember I just flipped over to Google totally yesterday

One day totals yesterday
$59.70

Now you know the rest of the story....

Just to say a BIG thank you for a great question :)

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That's interesting...

When we were using Google AdSense we made about 10 bucks on a good day...

With Yahoo! Beta we are making more like 20 - 30 bucks a day.

Do you think its possible that it really depends on what your market is as to whether or not one is better than the other?

Obviously my sites are pet related... maybe Yahoo's ads do better in some categories than Google's ads do...(of course, maybe not...)

If you still feel Google out performs Yahoo, wht do you think it will take on Yahoo's part to even the score?

Also, is it possible that when you switched over to Google AdSense on your site that you were getting more clicks and revenue due to the fact that there were new ads on the site and your visitors were taking more of a notice to them? I've always noticed that if I change the look of the ads I'm displaying I get a bump in clicks for awhile. But after some time, the regular/return visitors will kind of tune them out. So I try and change them up (color-wise) every few months.

I plan to stick with Yahoo! for the time being and see what happens when they get the rest of the bugs out of their beta system.

Hopefully I can also zero in on the best ad categories/subcategories to use in addition to the contextual ads being displayed. But it has been tough to get a bead on how the specified categories I'm experimenting with are working. I've yet to try a category that resulted in an equal number of ads being displayed in comparison with the conetxtual ads that are showing.

Thanks for everyone's comments.

I'd still like to hear if anyone has any suggestions for my sites regarding layout, positioning, or colors being used on the ads.

Thanks again for the input!

Inchpractice,
Very nice site, and you might just be getting a call from me next time I'm over...

ccrooke,
IMHO Yahoo is more professional in terms of fitting into your site content - I don't mean the company but the actual advertisers and their text. Their ads look better put together, descriptions less spammy, and destination sites better quality. Though dburdon could probably tell you better, the rates on Google are rather cyclical, the keywords going from neglected and cheap, to competitive, to suicidal bidding, and back down again after the advertiser shake-out.
I believe Yahoo is on its way up whereas Google has or is peaking, and it shows - I've had 3 offers this week from various agencies or sales channels connected to my suppliers promoting Adwords with free credit. It seems that everyone and their aunt is using it, and their aunts aren’t designing quality sites that I would feel proud of promoting.

Take care

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Alex TJ
Corsi di inglese per aziende - Milano
Servizi di Traduzione Professionale

Traffic is the same. Ads were the same as well same layout same color same everthing. Same Place same font, same number of ads, Different CTR bigggg difference
Yhaoo was giving us targeted ads actually very good ads just a terrible CTR. I can't answer that question as to what Yahoo needs to do for One I suggest a better more up to date reporting. Why they chose and they chose to delay reporting a day is beyond me.

The site these ads are on is not a site people come back to except for another location for something. I really won't give any clues as to the site nothing porn all clean just not a site designed for return traffic.

I kept the yahoo ads up for more than a couple months as April is over and kept seeing all our other sites doing 10-12% CTR in Google and gave yahoo the time to see if the CTR would increase just never did. This was my testing site to see if I wanted to change over the sites to them as well, won't happen now...

I don't understand it some say they go up with yahoo but I have never seen any proof of that I see proof as I am the one that did it..

Just a quick note:

I've heard that the Conversion Rate is better for Google, more users buy from Google Ads than Yahoo Ads.

(Maybe Google is more respected)

This could make it better to use Google, even if it did get you less traffic because those Hits are more likely to actually buy. (Better value for each Click)

Sorry I have no proof of this it is just something I've heard.

Another issue could be Click Fraud, people clicking on ads to burn up your budget. Which is worse for this? Google or Yahoo?

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Business Support A Computer Portal

I'm astonished that you're all getting a CTR of 10%+, that's amazing to me. Is this normal for anyone else?

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home buying tips | credit help | mortgage tips

11% or whatever click thru is amazing...

I'd like to see the site that gets that kind of ctr. Usually that is an indicator of a site w. very little useful content for its visitors. If your site has lots of good info and features for your visitors they are less likely to click on ads to other sites

My sites get the standard 2% - 5% ctr.

I don't think 2% to 5% is anywhere near standard in advertising. That's still very high...pat yourself on the back.

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home buying tips | credit help | mortgage tips

I really can't send the sites to anyone but we have allot of useful information just our sites are built in such as way that the user will use the presented ads.

I just looked for the month of april we had a 8% overall click through percentage.

This is 20 channels so as you can see some were much higher to keep such a good percentage.

Another note I changed all the ads on the site over to Google funny thing is I missed some yahoo somewere and guess what we still did the same amount we were doing with the whole site yahoo....

Go figure that one...

You guys know it's against AdSense TOS to disclose your CTR? And you're just looking fw to getting shut down for it?

Not that I've heard any has been shut down for that, but I'd be more careful about it if I were you.

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Brian Carter San Diego CA 92111
Free E-Course: AdSense Profit Secrets Revealed
Qualified AdWords Professional
http://adwordsconsultant.blogspot.com