Google vs Yahoo!

The Difference Between Google and Yahoo!

It is commonplace for search engine marketers to drag and drop their campaigns from Google to Yahoo and MSN (and sometimes Ask). This approach needs to be treated with a grain of salt, however. It is important not to write off the other search engines, particularly Yahoo. There is a lot of excellent volume to be captured, depending upon the vertical you are targeting.

Some campaigns perform horribly in Yahoo and MSN. Indeed, it is sometimes hard to get anything out of MSN due to the low search volume. It is also easy to become frustrated with Yahoo and MSN bulksheets, especially if you do not have a ton of experience working with them. I have worked alongside search engine marketing managers who have completely written off Yahoo, and sometimes understandably so.

Truthfully, I have not always been the largest proponent of Yahoo’s search technology. However, in many cases, it is possible to get a lot of quality business or leads out of Yahoo -- again, if you are in the right vertical. You might even get more than you are getting in Google! There are always exceptions to the rule, but it is often times the case that the Yahoo and MSN searchers are less savvy than the Google searchers. They also tend to be older and less educated (again, not always). It is possible to make logical conclusions about what campaigns should perform well in Yahoo and MSN, and those that should not. Without giving away every client I ever worked on, suffice it to say, I would think a Rolex e-commerce site would do poorly in Yahoo, and lead generation for The University of Phoenix could do quite well.

There are always exceptions to the rule, but it is often times the case that the Yahoo and MSN searchers are less savvy than the Google searchers. They also tend to be older and less educated (again, not always). It is possible to make logical conclusions about what campaigns should perform well in Yahoo and MSN, and those that should not. Without giving away every client I ever worked on, suffice it to say, I would think a Rolex e-commerce site would do poorly in Yahoo, and lead generation for The University of Phoenix could do quite well.

I found it very interesting when I logged into each search engine (today is the Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday). Google has a very slick looking image of Dr. King on a handsome background. Yahoo has something that looks like Monopoly Money. Well this is not direct evidence of the different audiences (and the brains behind each operation), it works out to being a funny comparison of the two search engines.

In conclusion, if you are running paid search and you have the budget for all of the engines, make sure to give Yahoo and MSN a whirl. They aren’t always going to work well for what works in Google, and sometimes they won’t work well at all. But it is worth dealing with those clunky bulksheets and the Panama UI to find out, because there is still a lot of quality traffic to be captured.