AdWords Traffic Loss with IE7

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AdWords Traffic Loss with IE7

Will AdWords Take a Big Hit?

RockSolidWes

2:27 am on Jul 28, 2006 (gmt 0)

IE7 Will be distributed by automatic updates in the 4th quarter of this year. The standard toolbar will feature MSN search by default. Will users use the standard toolbar in great mass? Or will they continue to use Google regardless of this default picture?

I personally think MSN search share will go up substantially by novice users. But Google will retain most of its base and AdWords will be the number one source of traffic for advertisers.

venrooy

3:10 am on Jul 28, 2006 (gmt 0)

This could be huge, because I think that they are also automatically updating all IEs to 7 if you have windows update running on your computer.

migriffin

3:29 am on Jul 28, 2006 (gmt 0)

I updated via the beta and they used Google as the toolbar default. I assumed this was because my IE6 had Google as my default and I thought this was a nice gesture to keep my settings. Vista will make a much bigger impact on search as MSN will likely be much more tightly integrated.

gopi

6:53 pm on Jul 28, 2006 (gmt 0)

>> I thought this was a nice gesture to keep my settings

There is no other way for MS than to inherit the default settings. Infact in a indirect way it will help them because the new IE7 search box will inherit MSN as the search provider (as its the default for most users!).

RockSolidWes

7:09 pm on Jul 28, 2006 (gmt 0)

When I tried the update, I had Google as my 'default' search provider in IE. I selected import my old IE settings. However, by default the new search box integrated into IE7 used 'Windows Live' search. I think the IE7 Search box is considered a new feature, so by default, it is set to 'Windows Live' search which directed me to an MSN search. In addition, my Google toolbar showed up, but was kind of hidden, pushed off to the side behind some buttons. I had to manually move that portion of the toolbar to expose the Google toolbar's search function.

My question is: Will this impact the number of searches on the Google network to a point that advertisers will feel pain? Will this new search box feature in IE7 alter enough users behavior?

DamonHD

7:37 pm on Jul 28, 2006 (gmt 0)

Hi,

If MSFT do do this then they are likely to provoke one or more new investigations into monopolistic behaviour, lots of half-arsed public ranting in the press/TV/etc, and eventually a big fine from the US or EU competition authoritites.

This woul be a stupid thing for them to do!

Rgds

Damon

luke175

10:37 pm on Jul 28, 2006 (gmt 0)

Hi,
If MSFT do do this then they are likely to provoke one or more new investigations into monopolistic behaviour, lots of half-arsed public ranting in the press/TV/etc, and eventually a big fine from the US or EU competition authoritites.
This woul be a stupid thing for them to do!
Rgds
Damon

I doubt it...Firefox defaults to Google search. The issue at hand was the bundling of IE with Windows, this would be an issue outside of that and I don't see it any different than AOL defaulting to the use of their browser with their ads and their search.

MikaelTC

11:14 pm on Jul 28, 2006 (gmt 0)

The move might get a bunch of folks who haven't used MSN search in a long time to give it a go. If the users find it to be better than google then they'll stay with MSN, if they don't like it then they'll go back to whatever they used before.

I expect that the "novice users" are already using IEx with MSN search, so that impact will be small. I've taken a look at the new Live search and I think it's pretty neat. If their product is better than the competion then we advertisers will have to take notice. (Now if only MSN Adcenter were as refined and easy to use as AdWords)

blaze

10:49 am on Jul 29, 2006 (gmt 0)

well, all i can say is... GO MICROSOFT!

(as an ex employee of netscape, I can tell you hell has truly frozen over)

vphoner

8:52 pm on Jul 29, 2006 (gmt 0)

It would be great to see the pay per click market distributed more equally between more companies. This makes for better competition which is better for advertisers. Look at some of the quasi monopolistic behavior by google, not caring about a chuck of their advertisers. That will change when competition rolls in and they want to retain their advertising base. Every big company sooner or later makes the big mistake and pays the price.

OceanDoctor

10:20 pm on Jul 29, 2006 (gmt 0)

Agreed, vphoner. We're just getting started in earnest with adCenter (as AdWords refugees following the recent "quality" score fiasco) and, though adCenter still has a way to go, I must say that Microsoft seems to be making an admirable run at the gold ring. I believe we've already seen some of the benefits of competition emerging, such as ad scheduling, which adCenter had out of the box and AdWords just added. My hope is that more competition will not only affect performance and price, but also corporate arrogance.

RockSolidWes

1:58 pm on Jul 31, 2006 (gmt 0)

Yes. I have tried the new adcenter with great success. The conversions are excellent (far better than Yahoo! and Google). But if more people start to use MSN Live search, there the traffic may be dilluted a bit and the excellent conversions may come down to Google and Y! levels -- which is still good nonetheless.

deep_alley

5:51 pm on Jul 31, 2006 (gmt 0)

Totally agree with MikaelTC and I do hope that they tweak adcenter so its more user friendly.
If MSN can manage to drive more traffic to its search, there will be lots more advertiser competition, I would assume cost per conversion will go up. Right now it seems like a lot of advertisers are 'testing' adcenter to see how good/bad it is. The coming few months will be pretty interesting.