Getting the position right of Overture

[lloyd]

Hi

I am just about to start a ppc campaign on Overture.

The questions I have are:

Is there a great difference in click thru's from postion one to position two to position three.

And

IF you are an e-commerce site is there also a ratio difference. For example if you are position one is your conversion rate higher than in position three.

[eWhisper]

Click throughs are definately based on what position you are in for Overture. The higher the better. And only the top 3 are shown on some partner sites, so if you want max exposure, you need to be in those positions.

Conversion rate has more todo with your website than with where you advertise - you should advertise where you'll get visitors that are relevant to your site, but once they have come to you, converting them is your job.

I've found that highly targeted keyword terms convert much better than general terms (I convert 1-3% (depending on the term) for general terms and 10-15% on highly targeted terms), yet the highly targeted terms only have 10% of the traffic, so it's best to use a two tiered approach. Keep the top listing for highly targeted terms (and find terms no one is bidding on that is relevant to you) and then find a budget comfortable spot for the highly searched, less relevant terms.

Hope that helps.

[martinibuster]

And only the top 3 are shown on some partner sites...

For some searches on Yahoo, only the top two bidders are shown.

[Chicago]

Concentration should be on top two, yet bidding pressure, spread, competitive nature of other bidders, and ROI should determine whether you can take a 1,2 or 3 position. All will most likely carry a 10%-30% CTR.

[eWhisper]

For some searches on Yahoo, only the top two bidders are shown.

I didn't even realize that Yahoo only showed two bids for any pages. For our general terms, the top 4 are shown at the top of the yahoo page, terms 5-6 at the bottom, and then on the 2nd page terms 7-13. So if your in posiiton 15 you'll be on the 3rd yahoo page at the top.

It's imporntant to know Yahoo's results page. Because in our industry, since if your in 6th place your at the bottom of the page, but in 7th at the top of page 2, position 7 has a better ctr rate than position 6.

Yahoo searchers have also seem to be looking through more results as of late. I keep a very general term at OV's minimum bid to check searchers. It's currently in 13th place. In January it had a 0.8% ctr. It's been steadily climing and last month it had a 2.8% ctr (the terms is searched over 32k times/month on OV - so no statistical anomaly).

Another thing to keep in mind is highly targeted vs general. I average 25-40% ctr for highly general terms (in position 1-3) and 5-20% for more general terms.

[cfx211]

I had an epiphany on Thursday that one of our terms was only profitable when it was in the top spot. I put it there and then went off for a long weekend. This morning I looked at the numbers and it paid out great.

I also have a term on google that does great in the middle of the pack.

The take away is that you'll have to figure out how to position your site through trial and error.

[kstprod]

lloyd,

Good luck with your campaign. Be forewarned though. If your area is in the least bit competitive, you will most likely fight like h*ll for those top spots. Watch for false competitor clicks too. I get a TON, and OV doesn't do much about it.

Overall my experience is good, lets just say I don't want to do without OV. Just watch your bids and clicks closely and stay on top of things. :)

[Compworld]

Yes, I agree. The fraud on Overture is mounting, and they do nothing about it. I had no other choice but to close our account due to the amount of false clicks. They even sent me a IP clickthrough report, and it proved my point that several clicks came from the same IP at the same time, and they refused to issue credits for those click throughs. I am sure that as more people and companies bring these complaints to the surface, Overture will eventually fix the problem some how, but the question is why they don't do anything now. Granted, we are a small company, and we had only spent around $1000 per month with them, but its just poor business practices.

Its a shame though, Overture was a good company up until a few months ago. I wonder what happened to them...

CompWorld