Google v Overture

[thejenn]

Authored by: Daniel Jupp

Full Text: http://www.searchengineguide.com/jup..._v_overtu.html

A Snippet:

Search engine marketing is literally a war of words. Clawing your way to the top of the pile often requires a skill level befitting the most advanced of military campaigns but in order to reap the benefits, you first have to ensure you’re fighting the right battle.

[kevgibbo]

In my experience AdWords is far more superior in terms of converting sales. Apparently this is because Google users are more technical, making them more likely to purchase online.

[todaysadmin]

I have had great success with adwords. It is very user friendly and easy to navigate.

[imbobbyus]

AdWords is better than overture when it comes to converting to actual sales. I am happy that we do not have to spend on Overture now as we already have high page rank in Yahoo for most of our keywords (Mostly in top 5).

[IgorMordkovich]

I found Yahoo's Overture to cost a lot and refer fraud traffic. I shut it down.

[hempsisters]

I've found Google to be soooo much easier to use and they have a much easier set up. But when I look at conversions, I'm doing better with Yahoo... I'm generally about number 5 or 6 position for each key word and in some cases Google does better... but overall Yahoo is better... only because it's less expensive. I get more sales from Google... but my cost is much higher. My website is hemp-sisters.com and i only buy hemp and eco type key words... niche stuff so that might have something to do with it... but i can't wait for yahoo to improve interface... i love googles reports and ui. hope this helps. ed-

[Raise Capital]

We used google and yahoo. It seems to me that yahoo tries to drain your pocket book. If you set your amounts at particular limits, Yahoo charges your account to refill. I loved it when they had it where you have a budget for the month, and they stopped charging. I did not know how true the hits were

Google: I thought google made it easy on the pocket book. Now, we can get points off our transaction fees if we use Adwords and Google Checkout all together. Altough there are some small problems with Google Checkout, they may be more competitive in pricing to PayPal.

Jason

[StupidScript]

It seems that different markets respond differently to either Google or Yahoo's user base. In our field (legal), we used to get better ROI from Yahoo, however that has been changing over the past couple of years as they expand their 'partner network' with little attention paid to the quality of those 'partners'.

A couple of comments about the article:

multiple changes to ad campaigns permitted at no extra cost

In theory, true, however in Google practice, this is not true. When a Google ad is modified its 'quality score' (PageRank and other factors) changes to reflect the un-tested ad copy, resulting in a higher CPC until the ad proves its worth. As time goes on and the ad does well, the CPC drops and the ad's position improves.

Google’s submission procedure offers one considerable advantage; speed of use.

While it is true that you can login and get a few ads up and running on Google near-immediately, there is no mechanism for bulk uploading, which Yahoo does have. Unfortunately for Yahoo, the editorial delay and inconsistencies in the operation of their automated verification programming often make a large upload of ads prohibitively 'expensive' in terms of server bandwidth required (Y's bots hit the server really aggressively) and hassle (fixing or resubmitting ads that were declined due to errors made by the bots).

Then again, Google's approach forces an advertiser to only include terms that they really want, and to craft ads that really work. That's a good thing.

Lastly, Yahoo is losing MSN, arguably their best 'partner'. MSN's AdCenter has been in beta for a few months and should be dropping Yahoo's ads in favor of MSN's ads within the next few months ... or whenever MS finally gets done with the beta. At that point, there will be quite a tussle between Yahoo advocates and advertisers to determine why anyone would want to advertise with Yahoo anymore, given the disappointing condition of their 'partner network'.

[Words of Magic]

I would definately recommend Google Adwords, its the hardest PPC system to master but those who do, are well rewarded.

-Google Adwords allows you to sveral websites in your account
-Starter & Standard edition User accounts that caters for beginners to advanced users
-Easy to use stable interface
-Free conversion tracking tool that allows you to track your individual keywords
-Allows you either broad or precise matching between phrases
-Lets you rotate multiple ads simultaneously, and lets you focus your ads on specific countries.
-Lets you change your ad's instantly, that makes it the ultimate engine for testing ideas super fast.

I would also recommend testing out yahoo PPC, to take advantage of any traffic you maybe missing via google. I frequently come across expensive terms with much more competing ad's via google compared to yahoo, so test it out.

Wishing you all the success in the world,

Paul Smith
Adwords Consultant

[mannyj]

Have any of you also tried MSN's AdCenter? The ROI seems to be fairly good and at much cheaper rates than Adwords. The good thing about all of the competition means that prices for advertising should come down over time.