aolgoogle traffic - disappointing?

[chiyo]

Since Google has been full time on AOL for the past week, i have to admit at some disappointment at the amount of traffic delivered. Ours are b-to-b rather than consumer sites, but the referrals from the aol search site url's seem smaller than expected given their large reach.

Anybody else wish to share..

Our SE referral percentages approx for the last 4 days.

Google 55%
Yahoogle 22%
MSN 10%
AV 8%
AOL 3%
Yahoo 2%

Our AOL referrals before were inconsequential before as we did not have great inktomi presence.

But surprised that AV is outranking AOL. I thought with the recent change, that at least they would match AV referrals.

[mack]

I think this can all be put down to AOL not having as big a market share.

[Marcia]

>Ours are b-to-b

chiyo, I've never thought of AOL as b-to-b territory, my guess is that the user profile is probably more oriented to consumer goods. I've tried to figure it a bit by looking at what types of ads they run, figuring those are there based on demographic data they supply the advertisers that wouldn't be available to us.

[chiyo]

"chiyo, I've never thought of AOL as b-to-b territory"

Yes im assuming that this is the reason. However I was thinking that given how big the AOL market share is that people keep telling me that we would gain some, even at lower percentages!

Ours are btob i guess. Basically ezines for managers and proffesionals. i would think there were a few of these on AOL, especially among the elder less-internet savvy types.

Still we are happy that it is at least delivering us a few score more unqiues a day.

I guess it confirms how big a factor SE demographics is. Very interesting...

[misosoph]

Started to compile the stats. Got too depressed. When students are not in school ... in a word, summer is off-season for my site. In any case, aolsearch is where it has been all year, about 3%.

[Brett_Tabke]

Make sure to consider the caching effect at aol. If your site is completely cacheable by a caching proxy server, numbers will be under reported.

There is no reliable way to calculate it that I have seen. The only way to determine real numbers is to disable caching at the server level.

Go to "Faq" and then "caching": [webmaster.aol.com...]

For numbers, Aol.google is running about 30% of what google.yahoo is doing. Yesterday on a site with full no cache headers:

2585 www.google.com (including top tlds)
252 google.yahoo.com
71 aolsearch.aol.com
12 aolsearch.aol.co.uk

[keyplyr]

27.40%: google
15.15%: yahoo
7.37%: msn.com
2.36%: aol
1.65%: lycos
1.62%: altavista

Unlike everyone else, my google hits are down by half, due to a large loss of incoming links affecting SERP ranking; haven't determined cause of the linkage decrease yet.

[taxpod]

I'm too lazy to pull the actual numbers but suffice it to say that AOLGoogles have exceeded Yahoogles in the past day or so. My site is purely consumer oriented - no b-to-b at all. Search AOL referrals are around 300 a day. Yahoogles 250.

I'm not sure exactly when the AOL database was fully propagated. I do know that even late Thursday while I was able to view Google enhanced serps via the WWW home page, searching from the AOL account homepage was yielding Inktomi search results. So perhaps we haven't yet seen the full impact of AOL yet.

I keep a "bring your own connection" account with AOL - even though it's way over-priced - because I like to be able to view the world the way an AOLer does. I think we'll be talking about an increase in AOL traffic for a while. That'll be when we're all complaining about our e-mails. For example, everything I offer is free content. Yesterday I received an e-mail yelling at me and saying that this guy would never ever pay me for my content because he didn't find what he was looking for! My eyes wandered up to the address and there it was "[e-mail]" I deleted it immediately!

[ciml]

I'm finding AOLgle about a third better than I found AOL with Inktomi.

I find that Yahoogle refers more than six times as many as AOLgle (.com), but much less than www.Google.com and www.google.co.uk

[olias]

Taxpod, I fully sympathise with you on the email thing.. I'd forgotten that side effect of having high AOL traffic!

I'm finding quite respectable levels of traffic on a consumer only site.

4275 www.google.*
951 aolsearch.aol.com
555 google.yahoo.com
182 aolsearch.aol.co.uk

[Alby]

I am seeing almost 12% from AOL up from 2.5% on a business-to-consumer web site.

[jaytierney]

I'm seeing some decent results from AOL, although not as much as I expected. I assume in the fall this will increase quite a bit...

Hey, considering I used to get 0 traffic whatsoever from AOL, I can't complain.

[Jane_Doe]

One of my sites generates a lot of email. I've noticed I get different types of emails from visitors from Google compared to visitors from AOL. One of my sites was dropped from Google due to a software glitch for a couple of months. During that time, the more sophisticated, very well written emails dropped off, which leads me to suspect that Google users have probably have higher incomes/higher education than some of the other search engines.

With the emails I get from people ending in aol.com, I get a lot of questions asking for advice. I even put in my contact page that due to the large volume of email I receive, I can't provide people with individual advice or replies. After that my email did drop off, but I still get a lot of emails asking for advice and 90% of them end in aol.com. People ask me questions you wouldn't believe-- "Should I take this medication my doctor prescribed?", "What should I do for condition X?" (when I don't even have a web site on condition X), How can I lose weight? (also not a subject of any of my sites). Quite a few have also sent me me their medical test results and ask me to interpret them (I'm not a doctor or any kind of medical person). Its very strange.

So I don't know much about marketing, and I know that my email is just anecdotal examples, but my guess would be that aol users and Google users tend to have very different demographics.

[RuglesHome]

AOL moved into third place for SE referral.

%'s
Google 52
Yahoo 17
AOL 7
MSN 6

I expect my Google numbers to go down and AOL up, as AOLer's stop going to google to search. Now they can use it on their browser.

[brendan]

I agree with a lot of what has been said already, I am seeing better results for a lot of B2C sites from AOL than ever before.

On our sites AOLgle is doing better than Yahogle for B2C type sites. That's the kind of traffic I would expect from AOL as well, I shall look forward to lots more sales this next month from the change over which is all very exciting.

[Robert Charlton]

>>I expect my Google numbers to go down and AOL up, as AOLer's stop going to google to search. Now they can use it on their browser.<<

Mmmmm... that, in combination with AOL caching, raises an interesting point I hadn't considered. I had hoped to be able to report to some clients, who are doing well on Google but not on Inktomi, that they might expect an increase in traffic. Now it seems, as far as the server logs go, that the effect might be just the opposite.

[brotherhood of LAN]

I see AOL comparable with the little boost in traffic from AltaVista with their update a few weeks ago. Still alot less than MSN, Yahoo and Google, but still appreciated.

[topr8]

increase in traffic from

aolsearch.aol.com
(now head to head with google.yahoo.com)

but not from

search.aol.com

assume there is a difference, not sure what it is, i think aolsearch.aol.com comes from having aol installed not sure though.

[taxpod]

You can get to either one without the software but search.aol.com is accessed via aol.com. I guess nobody uses their home page. But why would you use it?

aolsearch.com is the one you get to when searching from inside AOL software. And these are the visitors you're after. They haven't necessarily become "web savy" yet.

[dogboy]

AOL is all about b2c and asymmetrical information.

...think big generic keywords, and be #1 for your term, and the $ will pour in... 'Golden Traffic' we call it because it can convert like mad. The key is to have really simple sites that are 'pretty'.... (more important here than anywhere else.) Say you wanted to sell 'coffee mugs'... land them on a splash page which, in the first fold, shows your best 3 sellers... show them the price (shipped to their door with a bow on top) and put a big ORDER button on the page (where they will almost trip on it) that takes them to one simple order form... then be #1, not #2, #1 for 'coffee mugs'... and you'll rake it in.

Basically, if you didn't notice, I think being ranked #1 here makes more of a difference than in other engines.... in other words, the #1 conversion rate here will beat any of the other big boys' #1 conversion rate... but note, I'm NOT talking about QUANTITY... I'm talking QUALITY... defined by RATE (again, NOT total sales) and I think this conversion rate, for top placing sites, is what makes this engine special..... the users aren't 'web savvy' yet;)

but, yeah, if you are #4 for 'industrial widgets', I doubt you are going to see a noticeable increase in either in traffic OR sales

[Weblamer]

I noticed a trickle instrease in search.aol.com on my site. Definatly more than what was comeing in before.

However I am rather dissapointed with the alogo aol is useing to pull results from google. On one of my targeted keywords, aol puts a competetors page on for the first 9 targets. My jaw dropped when i saw this guy's website listing one right after another for basically the entire first results page.

[EliteWeb]

wow now im getting a lot of traffic from aol, i received enough before but now it has went up 100%

:)

[budterm]

I am quite disappointed, as I was looking for a real windfall.

No increase in sales, and I have a number one position for a very competitive consumer keyword.

Actually, sales have been down for a few weeks now, even tho my overall SERPS have been improving.

I'm hoping things will pick up when folks come back from holiday.

[mahlon]

I have noticed no increase, do I need to update Webtrends to see these results?

TIA

[Ready To Roll]

This merger was an absolute disaster for me. I had finally gotten to the top ten for a very competitve, prime keyword, and it lasted exactly 24 hours. After two solid years of trying to make a comeback, I thought I could FINALLY have something to feel good about, but then the hits dropped like a hammer. Not only for that keyword, but every listing I had fought hard to get on AOL.
AOL was a good alternative if you didn't have good listings on Google. Am I the only one who thinks Google's domination of the search engine universe is not a good thing? I have had zero sales for five straight days now, and for the first time feel that the jig is up. Any headway I make into Google quickly disappears; one site that was doing so-so has dropped to a PR2, even though the in-links (and outs for that matter) haven't changed.

OK, venting over. Here's to the NEXT update.....

[papabaer]

Well, after a few more days to evaluate the AOL/Google traffic, I can say I am more that pleased. Demographics are always a factor, but in this case, it has all been positive. Traffic is up substantially, plus I'm seeing good conversion ratios.

[eboda]

Bingo!

This is the topic I was looking for. Seems my question I have should have been posted here?

Please see my posting:
[webmasterworld.com...]

On this note...
I have seen increased AOL traffic, it has been crazy busy at my site via AOL search results.

Hope someone can address my thoughts on my other posting. - Thanks!

-eboda

[webman]

I also haven't seen much of a traffic increase from AOL and my sites are very consumer oriented. I'd like to blame the caching that AOL does as an issue, but I haven't even received hits to most of my pages for that to matter. I'd estimate that AOL/Google accounts for 1-2% of my traffic.

My guess as to why I'm performing terribly (since my sites are consumer oriented) is that AOL users are typing in search phrases that I have not anticipated.

[Alby]

Ready_To_Roll,

Check your sticky at the top of the screen where it says: "You have mail".

[Ready To Roll]

God bless you, Alby.

I tried to reply to your sticky mail, but got a '404.' Just know that your words are very much appreciated, and have been taken to heart and hand. I will keep you apprised.

You are an extremely decent human being.

R2R