Overture traffic falling off?

Anyone noticed big reduction in Overture traffic?

[John]

I have checked that very little has changes for my targeted search terms but I have watched clicks dropping off alarmingly over the last say two weeks, drop of 60-70%, anyone noticed anything like this? Have I missed something?

Regards

John

[sparrow]

Yea, AOL went Google!

[TomWaits]

Some of the drop may be seasonal, too. Less people search in May than they do in January, for example, in my experience.

[tedster]

I've got a bunch of "bottom feeder" bids that seem to have dropped off significantly as well. I think several of the lesser Overture partners who used to display 10 listings or more have cut that back.

I don't watch these closely enough to say with certainty, bu I suspect that the Oingo returns, for example, have changed significantly. Some Overture words don't even get displayed.

[msgraph]

Ever since the beginning of April I have lost almost half my traffic. It keeps going down too. I've even gone so far as to raise the bids to levels that would have made a serious money drain a few months ago but the traffis is still seriously low.

[minnapple]

< I suspect that the Oingo returns, for example, have changed significantly.

Tedster, can you elaborate on this?
Do you think Oingo as a percentage will increase because of loss of AOL or were they somehow related?

Minnapple

[garbageman]

I have seen a drastic drop in traffic over the last few weeks as well. I believe the AOL thing has had great impact, at least in this corner. When I questioned them, they said some advertisers have experienced increases, and others, like us, decreases.

They are scheduled to end their deal with Netscape in August.

Wasn't aware they had a deal with Google though. Might have to check that out. Those AOL customers were valuable.

[John]

Thanks for he observations guys, looks like Overture is going through a lean patch. I picked top 5 search terms, for GOOGLE and AOL and set up Google Adword select and that has put me back at the top slot at AOL :-) don't know how long that will last but it is only costing a few bucks a day so will run for a while.

Just wanted to say, when the rest of the world is talking rubbish, you guys talk sense!

Thanks

[tedster]

> Do you think Oingo as a percentage will increase because of loss of AOL or were they somehow related?

I don't think the Oingo changes were tied to AOL dropping Overture. It's just another drop I thought I'd mention. AOL was not a low bid source like Oingo used to be.

I know some people thought there was something fishy with Oingo click-throughs, but I always got better than average conversions (and I miss them). Right now, only my high bids on Overture are performing at all. Low bids seem nearly dead in the water, and ALL Overture bids are off big time with the AOL drop - but that's to be expected.

As a percentage, Oingo "might" pick up - but I haven't seen it happening so far. Right now Dogpile seems to be the performer that converts best on my accounts.