11 replies to this topic

[Haystack]

Have any of you stumbled across the survey Yahoo was running regarding a PPC/Paid Inclusion model somewhat similar to the current LookSmart model? Basically, it sounded like they were testing price points for the traffic.

Imagine if you had to pay between $0.15-$0.40 (the prices listed here are simply guesses as to what a company like Yahoo might consider charging) for every visitor generated through "natural" search results on their site. Assuming Yahoo dropped Google for some kind of pay per click for inclusion model, how would this effect your online advertising budget?

[Jill]

How would it affect yahoo's traffic? Why would people want an all-ad-all-the-time search engine/directory?

Jill

[Haystack]

Good question.

Unfortunately, I think there are way too many Yahoo users who would just assume "it's hard finding stuff on the internet."

Ideally, they'd say that to a slightly more web savvy friend who'd point them to a better search resource, but chances are pretty good that enough business prospects would linger at Yahoo to simply ignore.

[Jill]

I guess it would all depend on how poor the quality of their results got (if they did at all). More and more people are switching to Google all the time. If Yahoo really wants to give them even more reason to do so, well, then they deserve what they get!

As to your original question, it's not something I would personally do for my clients (manage a ppc campaign) but if it's something they wanted to do, I would refer them to others who could help.

Jill

[BrianR]

Ed

Interesting question.

Here in the UK, I have a hard time persuading clients to pay the one-time-only inclusion fee of £199 to get a listing in yahoo.co.uk and yahoo.com. Traffic generated by yahoo on the B2B sites I work with is always less than 15% of total traffic - sometimes a lot less, though it is a solid inbound link.

When I tell these same clients that our US cousins are paying $300 per annum for the same privilege, they are aghast.

If yahoo.co.uk switched to a PPC model, I'd drop them - simple as that. My clients just wouldn't bite.

BrianR

[AussieWebmaster]

Have any of you stumbled across the survey Yahoo was running regarding a PPC/Paid Inclusion model somewhat similar to the current LookSmart model? Basically, it sounded like they were testing price points for the traffic.

Imagine if you had to pay between $0.15-$0.40 (the prices listed here are simply guesses as to what a company like Yahoo might consider charging) for every visitor generated through "natural" search results on their site. Assuming Yahoo dropped Google for some kind of pay per click for inclusion model, how would this effect your online advertising budget?

I think they are going to add the PPC to what already exists, not change the directory system and they are going to be doing the same thing LookSmart it self is about to introduce. Everyone wants to grab as much of this bid based hysteria money.
When an ad campaign increases 500% in a week where apart from this method would it be allowed?
If a print ad jumped that much people would go elsewhere, same with TV etc. But because the model has been accepted here and is running roit in certain industries it will be one everyone wants to take short-term advantage of.

[Haystack]

If yahoo.co.uk switched to a PPC model, I'd drop them - simple as that. My clients just wouldn't bite.

BrianR, if they can turn a positive ROI on that traffic, and if that traffic really represents 15% of their SE traffic, I'd imagine it's a bullet they'd be stupid not to bite.

Yahoo is really walking a fine line with this. As Jill pointed out, if they degrade the quality of their search results they've just done Google a HUGE favor. However, from Yahoo's perspective, they know they're delivering customers to businesses for basically free at this point (actually they're paying Google to do it) so if they can figure out a way to charge businesses for that traffic without diluting their result quality they'll manage to maintain their market share of searchers and increase revenue by taxing businesses for the traffic. Based on what I've seen of MSN/LookSmart's approach to this, I think this is easier said than done.

Aussie, from what I understand, Yahoo is looking at something closer to LookSmart's current business model. If they wanted an auction system, they already have that and could simply roll out more and more Overture (owned by Yahoo) results onto their results pages. I think they're trying to figure out how to better monetize the "natural" results when they should simply provide the best quality natural search results they can while framing them with high priced PPC results.

[BrianR]

BrianR, if they can turn a positive ROI on that traffic, and if that traffic really represents 15% of their SE traffic, I'd imagine it's a bullet they'd be stupid not to bite.

Not if yahoo converted the current Google results entirely to PPC, as your initial post suggested (if I understood it correctly, that is!).

That 15% would drop dramatically because the savvy yahoo user knows that they are currently getting the benefit of both the yahoo directory and the Google web searches on the yahoo site.

Take away the Google results and my guess is they'd lose most of that traffic, unless they replaced Google with a search engine that produced similarly relevant results, and the closest they've got to that is Alltheweb. Mmmm...

I remain unconvinced that yahoo would be stupid enough to go PPC entirely.

BrianR

[Haystack]

Hi Brian, t sounds like you did understand what I was getting at. I think it would be similar to what MSN is doing with LookSmart results, where they don't rank the results based on price, but still charge by the click for the traffic. Of course, the results are diluted due to the fact that MSN is searching on an extremely limited portion amount of data to make decisions about relevancy (title, description, category, and a few keywords) compared to a true SE that searches entire pages.

Unfortunately, I don't think we'll see the mass exodus to Google you're suggesting. Just look at how many people continue using MSN!

[BrianR]

Don't people keep using MSN simply because it's the default SE for IE and that's what they're used to??

BrianR

[Haystack]

Don't people keep using MSN simply because it's the default SE for IE and that's what they're used to??

When you consider what a huge percentage of internet users first open their browser to MSN.com each time they get a new computer, yet the majority of web users use search engines other than MSN, I get the impression that MSN has a monopoly on people who don't know how to change their browser settings, or don't know what they're missing. Maybe it's the astrology info that keeps people coming back to MSN? Or people who just can't get enough of the pop-ups?

[BrianR]

I get the impression that MSN has a monopoly on people who don't know how to change their browser settings, or don't know what they're missing.

On the B2B sites I work with, the quality of MSN traffic tends to be poorer than the Google traffic. However, the numbers for MSN traffic are relatively low, so I can't be 100% sure about that.

BrianR