3 replies to this topic

[Kaleina]

I've been doing some research on one of my clients website. The research is specifically based on visitors interacting with the website (Conversions and ROI).

Before Yahoo switched, the site was getting a high percentage of visitors from Google with Yahoo placing 2nd for the same keywords. After the switch, I started to analyze things a bit more, and was surprised to find the following:

1. On Google, ranking for 1 popular keyword raised at #11
2. On Yahoo same keyword ranked at #7
3. Google: ranking for 2nd popular keyword raised at #4
4. Yahoo: ranking for 2nd popular keyword at #3

In addition, there are advertising campaigns (CPC) on both Overture and Google.

Results:

1. Google CPC and Overture CPC remains the same
2. Google visits dropped by 1/2, Yahoo increased by 30% over Google visits
3. Google conversions and ROI dropped dramatically
4. Yahoo increased dramatically

My site ranks: Yahoo, MSN then Google for traffic
Google visits are the same visits as before same keywords no change other than a higher ranking

What is most shocking, is the dramatic decrease in ROI and Conversions on Google.

I am left to assume that the buying power is on MSN and Yahoo and not on Google. Based on these assessments, should I not worry about Google and their algorithm changes because their visitors don't mean much to this one website?

I thought I was going nuts, so I invested in clicktracks to analyze the logs for me. It produced the following:

54% of visits are from Yahoo
22% from google
12% from MSN

70% of google visits came to the first page and exited. With 2% of the 30% converted
54% of Yahoo visits came to the first page, and exited. 14% of the 46% converted.

I decided to further my investigation:
I make it a point to know my client's customer, in this case the target demographic is male/female 25+ coorporate, public office, high office position, decision makers.
I began a sample (a small one of 20 people in this target demographic that I know personally) I made the call and was very surprised:

24% used MSN because it is the first page that opens when they open IE
58% used Yahoo because they know of it and use it for news
4% used Google, because their child put google as their home page at home (and each time I had to describe google for them to recall)
the rest didn't know and it didn't matter to them with some of them using the MSIE search options.

I was still not convinced... How could I? I've spent so much time trying to analyze the google algorithm to be convinced by simple statistics.

I went to my client and asked a few questions:
It's important to know, my client gets customers 2 ways. 1 through another website operated by a giant entity listed #1 on Google for all keywords that are relevent to my clients business. 2. Thier own personal website which we maintain and manage.

Interesting enough in regards to the results of the other website not managed by us, my client says that for a week now phone calls have been of a lesser quality, quantity has increased but quality and conversions have dropped. I checked Yahoo rankings for this website. They are not listed in Yahoo for the top keywords as they are in Google. 2 weeks ago they were number 1 on both Yahoo and Google but dropped from Yahoo.

I decided to come here and see if anyone has found similar results. I've read a few articles on Who is Google's customer, and was surprised at what I read. But I'm very analytical and want to do more research before I stop driving for Google altogether for this client.

Anyone else have similar findings?

[Grumpus]

I agree with the basics, but I don't think Google's quality is going down overall. The buying money has always been on MSN and Yahoo. I can dig up posts from as far back as two years ago with me telling people they are silly to ignore MSN if they are selling consumer goods.

It's always been that way, it's just no one's ever noticed before.

G.

[Randy]

Welcome Kaleina !

Interesting statistics study you've conducted there.

The majority of sites I watch are showing pretty similar numbers to what you've posted. If anything, my B2C sites are even a bit more skewed towards MSN and Yahoo! The only difference in my numbers compared to yours are that MSN is bringing me a greater percentage of traffic than the site you looked at. Across the board on the sites I watch MSN traffic is either #1 or #2.

Generally speaking, our search engine delivered traffic since mid-February have Yahoo! and MSN running neck-and-neck in the 25-35% range, with Google lagging behind a bit in the 18-25% range. AOL traffic runs in the 8-13% range and Ask Jeeves in the 5-7% range.

We're actually not getting significantly less traffic from Google searches, but we're certainly getting more than before from Yahoo! and MSN. Both are sending traffic that is converting very, very well too. Both have always had higher conversion rates than Google, but the additional traffic they're now delivering certainly makes it more noticable.

Those general numbers apply to all of the sites I watch with the exception of one education-related site. That one site still gets more traffic from Google (41.47% in the last month) as compared to Yahoo! (17.98%) and MSN (14.83%). I'm not sure what to make of that yet, other than that it may support the notion that researchers tend to use Google when searching for informational types of sites.

[GuyFromChicago]

I agree with the basics, but I don't think Google's quality is going down overall. The buying money has always been on MSN and Yahoo. I can dig up posts from as far back as two years ago with me telling people they are silly to ignore MSN if they are selling consumer goods.

It's always been that way, it's just no one's ever noticed before.

G.

"Most" of the people who search with MSN are not exactly computer savvy. They’re using MSN to search because it’s the default search page on their new over priced PC.

Yahoo is a strong brand, and attracts quite a few new internet users. People who finally figure out how to change their home page usually change it to Yahoo. Most casual users like the portal pages.

Google, at least in my opinion, tends to consist of a more “advanced” group of users. They don’t want the bells and whistles, they want quality searches.

Granted these are general statements – I’m not trying to categorize every Internet user. Just going off what I’ve seen in the real world, and in my site stats.

Will some of this change with the g-mail launch? Will Google attract a new, less search savvy audience? We’ll just have to wait and see….but my bet is yes.