Category Results - vs - Search Results

What is your percentage?

[kris]

When you perform a search in Yahoo! the first line that shows up is "Category Matches". What percentage of users click that as opposed to going through scrolling down to the "Site Matches". Is there a rough number?

Accourding to your logs, how are people accessing your site? Through category page or search results? Here is what i found,

Search Page (with a #1 ranking for target phrase) : 62%
Category Page (with sponsored listing) : 38%

I was a bit surprised the category refferals was as high as it was. I never click that when searching on Yahoo. Then again I search with Google :)

[2_much]

Hi Kris,

I have a site that is ranking # 3 in Yahoo's serps, and it's one of 10 sites in the category page.

For 6 days, it got 36 referrals from the category, and 497 from the SERP's.

[lgn]

We are listed either 1 or 2 in the search
engine results for Yahoo.

We find that 90% of our Yahoo customers find
us using the Yahoo Search Tool, and only
10% browse the directory.

That would make sponsored listings a waste of
money, as they do not get priority in search
listings (Im talkin about Yahoo's sponsored
listings, not the google sponsored listings
at the top of Yahoo's search results).

General Rule: The higher you are in the general
search listings for your target keywords, the less important sponsored results become.

[kris]

I think that really depends on the term searched. Take a look at this.

Site A: Search term "Blue Widgets"

The category matches look like this,

Category Matches:
State > City > Shopping > Widgets > Blue Widgets

it gets only 4% of it's Yahoo traffic from the directory results.

Site B: Search term "Blue Widgets" the category matches look like this,

Category Matches:
Blue Widgets

This site is is a sponsored site and gets 37% of it's Yahoo traffic from the directory page. When you begin to see the category breakdown, people skip over it and head right for the SERPS.

Waste of money

Last month we got our moneys worth. The sponsor match referred us 796 customers for $100. That is only about 12c per click. Overture is charging nearly $3.00!

[skibum]

It is very dependent on the keywords targeted and the category in which the site is listed. One site I have stats for gets 80-90% of referrals from the category despite rankings in the top 5 for all targeted keywords on searches. This one is listed in a topical category.

A second similar site gets less than 5% of referrals from the category listing presumably because it was placed in a small regional category.

Those that have strong band names tend get a much higher percentage of referrals from SERPs due to brand name searches. Some also get a solid contribution from category referrals due presumably to brand recognition among other listings in the category.