AlyssaS - 5:10 pm on Sep 9, 2011 (gmt 0)

About the conversion level for Google Search traffic compared to Bing/Yahoo, I've long wondered what the difference is caused by. It's not only intentional tinkering with traffic quality on Google's side, or their creation of their own properties in the SERPs. The conversion level difference was always there, even back in the MSN Search days. For some reason Microsoft's search demographic has always converted better for me, and Google has always seemed to be more about research and window shopping.

I think it's two things

1. Bing/MSN users are older (and thus probably wealthier) - they got their hotmail account way back when and still use it and even search from within it. Or they search using defaults in I.E. What's more they trust the #1 listing, if it's No. 1 it must be good and they feel comfortable buying. G users are younger and less trusting.

2. There is no Instant on Bing - which means they serve the result only after the searcher has finished telling it exactly what they want - so the match is likely to be closer to what the searcher wants than G's guess based on a couple of letters. G's algo might be fine for the correct phrase, but G interrupts the customer from typing it in. Garbage search query in, garbage result out.