NEWS: Yahoo buys photo-sharing site Flickr

Yahoo buys photo-sharing site Flickr CNET News.com
Yahoo buys photo-sharing site Flickr Move comes less than a week after the Internet giant launched a beta test of a new blogging tool.

Yahoo has purchased online photo-sharing service Flickr, less than a week after the Internet giant launched a beta test of a new blogging tool.

Vancouver, British Columbia-based Flickr lets users upload digital photos from computers and camera phones, put together photo albums, and post photos to blogs, among other things.

Google generates dramatic profit growth, but eats into partners' income

Google's stock rose by almost 10% to $210 in late trading after the companyreported Q4 results that beat analysts' estimates. Here are the key numbers from Google's results and some brief comments about the sources of Google's income...

Google cut the proportion of revenue it pays to its AdSense partners to 77% from 85% a year earlier. On its conference call, the company ascribed this to (a) strong performance from partners that Google makes fixed minimum payments to, and (b) strong performance from smaller partners that receive a lower share of revenue. That's fine, but at the end of the day it still means that Google increased the percentage of profits it takes from its partners. Will this generate the same hostility from partners as eBay's recent price rise? Or to put it another way: is that a sustainable source of growth?

Google's AdSense program performed spectacularly, generating almost as much revenue as its search business ($490 million versus $530 million) and growing at almost an identical rate sequentially (28% versus 29%). Google's AdSense program is actually two distinct businesses: partnerships where Google provides PPC ads for other companies' search, such as AOL Europe, Ask Jeeves, and Shopping.com; and Google's contextual advertising business for content  owners.  Comments on the conference call suggest that both of these businesses performed strongly.

STATS: Paid versus Natural Search Clicks

The Search Marketing Advisor Newsletter Article: 
June 2004, Volume 3, Issue 2

The Natural SEO vs. Paid Search Relevancy Debate by Heather Molina, Alg

Looking at how result relevancy was split between the genders, both men and women found natural search results as the best answer for their query. However, it is important to note that a higher percentage of women than men find value in paid search advertisements. This means that for sites where the intended focus is for women, targeting some paid search ads in online marketing strategies would be wise. 

Employment and educational status findings suggested that more partially employed or unemployed users and non-college graduate users found paid search ads more relevant, over fully employed users and college graduate users. However, the majority of users in both categories found natural search results to be more relevant than paid search ads. The larger portion indicates that for a site which targets the unemployed or non-college graduate, there is a higher value in placing paid search advertisements. 

Looking at overall Internet experience and use, iProspect found that the longer a person has been using the Internet and the more often they log on, the higher the instance of the user preferring natural search results over paid search results. A strong correlation between education level and the experience of the Internet user suggests that the higher the education level and the longer and more frequent the Internet use, the more sophisticated the Internet user. 

Ed: Low education, poor people more likely to click paid ads. 

How could searchers be ignoring sponsored listings if search engines are pulling down billions of dollars on click based fees? Heading back to a June, 2005 Harris Interactive study on search behavior, data indicates that  56 percent of those surveyed do not know the difference between natural and paid search listings, and 51 percent of the search engine users who do know the difference prefer natural results.

A new WebSideStory study announced today shows that paid search has only a slight advantage over organic search results for conversions.

The study looked at more than 57 million search engine visits on Google, Yahoo and MSN and showed a median order conversion rate of 3.40 percent at business-to-consumer e-commerce sites for pay per click compared to a conversion rate of 3.13 percent for organic search results during the same timeframe.

March 18, 2008

Daily Search Forum Recap: March 18, 2008

Quality of Microsoft adCenter Traffic Falling?
A WebmasterWorld thread reports that several Microsoft adCenter advertisers are recently unhappy with the quality of traffic they are seeing from adCenter. The conversion rates on adCenter, as reported by a few advertisers, has been as low as ever. WebmasterWorld senior member, ByronM, posted some recent stats showing his concern. Based on over 200 clicks (not impressions, but clicks): Google has a 3.9% conversion rate Yahoo has a 2.2% conversion rate Microsoft has a 0.0%

Ed: Flypaper beats natural SEO. Accidental+habitual clicks approximate paid clicks. Bottom-line is 3% retention. Probability no statistical difference between Google, Yahoo, Microsoft.