Yahoo best when it comes to fulfillment - Surely not??

October 1st, 2007

If a report by complete.com is to be believed then yes. According to the report, Yahoo is the best search engine for getting users to click on their search engine results (at least for the period May to August 2007).

The figures are compiled by complete.com, which collates data from a number of ISP’s as well as some other proprietary methods of data collection. The report went on to say

“…Lower search fulfillment numbers mean that on a percentage basis fewer search queries on that engine resulted in the searcher clicking on a result link. So from this perspective one might consider Yahoo! more effective at getting consumers the results they want….”

This to a certain degree backed up a recent Websidestory report that Yahoo was indeed the most convertable search engine, however I think one has to further explore why this is

• Volume - Google in many Western European countries is the search engine of choice - in particular the UK and the USA. For this reason it receives substantially more click throughs than any other search engine, and thus is more succeptable to dilution in figures.
• Competition - Whist this varies significantly by sector, Google often has significantly more competitors in terms of rival advertisers. More competition means more choice, and thus you have to pull out all the stops in order to maximise the effectiveness of your ads, and maximise your SEO in order to raise visibility on the search engines. This would obviously be more applicable to paid search management
• Search Network - I am presuming this does not include any non-search network traffic. I have personally found Yahoo’s paid search matching to be somewhat ‘iffy’ when it comes to their search partners, with the majority of clicks on high traffic/high profit terms coming from third parties rather than the search engine results themselves
• Bounce rate - as above - what was the bounce rate from these referrals. Referrals are one thing - accountability is another

I would love to find out more about how this data has been collated for one and just howfar the research went. Ultimately what the reasons were for ’satisfaction’.

Entry Filed under: Search Marketing