Which is better?

[gnatik]

Hi All ...

Just wanted to get your opinion on which serch engine it is better to use for advertising on? Google, Yahoo, MSN?

Are there statistics as to which gets more conversions, etc? IS that even being at all measured?

Thanks!

[hhheng]

Google is the best, and then yahoo and msn. But I heard many story from forums that many people even can't own same money as invested in SE ads.

[gnatik]

Google is the best, and then yahoo and msn. But I heard many story from forums that many people even can't own same money as invested in SE ads.
You mean they spend on advertising more than they gain? I would imagine this wil be short term.

[mbm]

Google is best for traffic volume, while some advertisers report better ROI on Yahoo and MSN.
It would also depend on the content and target too. Some reports show that Google is used more by tech people, while Yahoo is preferred by female visitors. The best of all is to try all three of them and to check which one performs best for you.

[amar]

Majority of traffic will come from Google and Yahoo. Try both of them, compare the conversions. IMO Yahoo conversions are better than Google.

We need to choose the search engine based on the product or service we are going to promote.

[gnatik]

Google is best for traffic volume, while some advertisers report better ROI on Yahoo and MSN.
It would also depend on the content and target too. Some reports show that Google is used more by tech people, while Yahoo is preferred by female visitors. The best of all is to try all three of them and to check which one performs best for you.

Interesting, so Yahoo and MSN are better in terms of conversion.

[Gennady]

Google is the best, and then yahoo and msn. But I heard many story from forums that many people even can't own same money as invested in SE ads.
That is quite a blanket statement! Are you simply quoting market share? Perhaps you are referring strictly to the potential traffic volume from each? It sounds to me like you are simply estimating the CPC of each.

I do not think those are viable statistic on which to refer to one as being "better" than another.

In my opinion, much of this will require real world testing. However, I would definitely try to look at demographics. For example, as another poster here said, Yahoo has a greater female share while Google attracts the greater volume of "techies." In addition, Yahoo is traditionally used by those specifically looking for online shopping and finance information. Also, the MSN demographics tend to show an older (potentially more affluent) and less tech-savvy user.

[stevewaganer]

google is the best.yahoo is also good for traffic volume.

[Gennady]

google is the best.yahoo is also good for traffic volume.
Clearly!

[bathgems]

How do people get to the various search engines?

With Google one must go to Google or install the search bar. This tells me that Google caters to the more motivated among us.

MSN, I think, is the default search engine for those using MSN services. So those users are those who stay within their own realm.

I am not sure how users use Yahoo search. Are they going to the directoy and then choosing a web search? I use Yahoo for email, economic data, and news but have very rarely, if ever, used it for search. Maybe it is not really well integrated into this other content.

The reason I am trying to figure out how the users get to the various search engines is that it might tell us something about their persona that could give insight into the traffic from each.

Steve

[topboy]

Yahoo! search (and many other yahoo offerings) is that they are slow. There can be no debate over google's speed .... its fassssstt...
- yahoo search has a good feature of opening the search result in a separate window. How about detecting the users browser (at least firefox/safari) and offering a similar thing for tabs ?!
- yahoo! news again doesn't cluster results ? Is that sooo tough...

While there are some issues with yahoo! search... they have surely done well in terms of the time and effort (they have other things on the plate too) they have put into it. As far as the search market I heard numbers like the split being 35-30-13% for goog-yhoo-msn. Is that correct ?

[topboy]

With blogs -- Yahoo!. Heck, Google doesn't even show post descriptions in case of LJ posts.

When it comes to generally searching, I play around with both.

[Gennady]

Google is in the 60-70% range and MSN is definitely under 10%. Yahoo is in the 20's.

[louieann34]

Search Engine that is better use for advertising?

Google is the one that gives the best traffic volume..the next is Yahoo and then MSN.

[Darthfather]

I have to agree with majority here: Google is the best in all cases and Yahoo follows at a small distance. Why are we talking about MSN anymore?

[Gennady]

Because Microsoft has $50B in the bank.

[gnatik]

I have now been using Google and Yahoo to advertise. I can say that 90% of traffic comes from Yahoo, not google.

Perhaps I am not using it in the right way ... but why do people say google is better? What could I be doing wrong?

Thanks!

[Gennady]

Google tends to bring the most relevant information-type websites.

[traderonline]

i recommend Google. it is the worlds no 1 search engine :)

[Pilana]

I propose for everybody to check this one www.gahooyoogle.com/

they get great search result.

[Idea Guy]

For me it's Google, then Yahoo and MSN....

[thedark]

generally talking here about which is the best is a clear speculation, here is why. say you need a car. which one is the best? say you like mersedes. now, we have a condition that you would use it offroad, so hummer seems better now. than appears you would have to move over a swamp 5 m deep. so, finally we come to conclusion that you need a hover boat.

here's much the same. there's number of factors, which determine which SE works better for actual PPC campaign. here are those i recall:

1. search phrase. we all know that one search phrase is batter than other. wish phrases are best for actual products takes some experience and research. point is a phrase should attract audience with best conversion and take per click as little as possible.

2. products. some products are advertised better on particular SE. it does not really matter whether actual SE is the biggest (for sometimes it is not) if it brings best traffic for particular product.

3. campaign setup. even with same phrases and on particular engine you can have different result on how you setup the campaign, say charge per click, daily spend, whether advertise on external websites or not. there needs to be a balance, which in my experience best achieved experimentally.

4. analytics. to tell whether a particular campaign was successful, thorough analysis is required. you can use built in tools like google analytics or something more fancy like sales-n-stats.


so, basic plan is:
1. conduct research on the popular phrases.
2. setup campaigns on all the major SE & setup analytics for them.
3. see which ones are efficient and drop the rest.

it's useful to run the campaigns say for couple weeks, then shut down and in a month check ROI. this rather gives more accurate results.