Click Through Rates - YSM vs. AdWords

Yahoo CTRs are much lower for me

[GlenB]

Hi everyone.

My company spends a lot with both Overture (YSM) and Google AdWords. One big difference I have noticed between the two accounts is the CTR we get on our keywords. While the average CTR on our AdWords account is a healthy 4%, we get less than 1% on YSM. Obviously this has a major effect on total clicks/sales, and as a result we spend much more with Google than we do with Yahoo.

I am interested to know if other people have had this same experience, and if so; what, if anything did you do to increase your CTR with YSM?

Please note that this is for search traffic only. Also, we use the same keywords for both campaigns and our average position is comparable.

[shorebreak]

Yahoo and its distribution partners have much more to distract the searcher from search results than Google does.

[Nancy99]

Interesting. I manage numerous client accounts and we are testing 4 clients running simultaneously in Google and Yahoo at the same time, same keywords, and budget and we are finding that the CTR is higher across the board with Yahoo! Sponsored Search then with Google AdWords. We have not seen a jump in conversions, but the number of clicks and CTR is markedly up with Yahoo!

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[edited by: engine at 12:51 pm (utc) on Dec. 8, 2005]
[edit reason] No self promo [/edit]

[mitchy231]

I as well have had much better luck not only with CTR, but also with conversions, on YSM.

I find I can be much more specific on YSM, opposed to Adwords.

[shorebreak]

We manage close to $200M in annual search spend on Google and Yahoo, and overall see ~80% better CTR for Google than Yahoo. Things can be different for individual advertisers, but I think that big of a sample can't be an anomaly.

[GlenB]

Interesting. Obviously it depends on your industry, however shorebreak's large sample size seems to confirm my own experience.

Unfortunately if you're not in the top 3 positions in YSM it seems that CTR drops off immensely. For our company this wouldn't be a problem if conversion rates weren't so much lower compared to Google (but that's a whole 'nother story.)