Where to Test Your Site First

Google or Yahoo or MSN or Others

[King_Fisher]

A fellow webmaster and I are having a discussion,(argument).

When putting up a new site he likes to go to the secondary sites to fine tune
the key words, the ad, the opt in page, etc.

He contends that it is cheaper to do so and after all the corrections are made
then its time to go see Mister G or Mister Y.

I on the other think its a waste of time and money. One I have done ever thing I can I go directly to the G house and give it the acid test.

If you cant run with the big dogs, you might as well get up on the porch.

Any thoughts on this?...KF

[edited by: King_Fisher at 7:06 pm (utc) on Oct. 13, 2007]

[limoshawn]

I always test new site concepts on msn and yahoo before throwing it to the Google wolves. I love the predictability of msn traffic, unfortunately it's so little traffic one could not survive on it.

I think the main reason is that your results are more instant on the smaller engines as opposed to the big G where you have to let a campaign mature before seeing the true results.

[King_Fisher]

Limo, Point well taken!...KF

[poster_boy]

I've seen enough differences between Quality Score, keyword performance, ad performance, traffic quality, match types, etc. between Google, Yahoo, and MSN that - to me - success on one doesn't necessarily mean the same on another...

If the scalability lies on Google (and it does) - it's on Google that I'm testing. And, if the chief concern is cost - I'd suggest limiting the daily budget on your test campaigns.

Good luck.

[netmeg]

I always start with Google. It's where most of the traffic comes from, after all, and maybe it's just because I've been dealing with them so long, but it's just plain a lot faster to get a new campaign up and running. The Yahoo and MSN interfaces are slow and unwieldy, and they don't (so far) have any tools in place for the agency or anyone who has to deal with multiple large accounts and constant changes.