What are the reasons why Yahoo, despite its initial headstart (Go2.com, Overture, etc.) over Google in PPC advertising, is not anywhere close to Google Adwords in either market share for itself, or gain ‘win-win relationship image’ in terms of customer perception?
Can Yahoo do anything to bridge the gap, and even overtake Google in PPC advertising? How?
This is just to clarify based on the first response below. I’m not sure if it is purely a matter of personal preference.
Advertising is a business market, where only results would count, unlike consumer markets. When it comes to money making, the market is very efficient and ruthless.
Besides, advertisers don’t have to choose one of them over the other, as they could use both, if both would produce results for them.
Are there specific features and benefits of Google’s over Yahoo’s that advertisers prefer? For example, Bid policies, minimum bid rates, conversions to sales, terms of use, etc.?
If you haven’t already seen it, the link is to an interesting article. There are links to some other interesting articles at the bottom of the article. There appears to be a variation of opinions among marketing news reporters.
I’m not so sure that Yahoo really pushed itself as a search specialist early on. When I first heard of Yahoo a little over 10 years back, it was for two reasons, neither of which was search.
One was people getting @yahoo.com email accounts. The other was the finance message boards. Some people at work were using the message boards as a way to anonymously vent some steam about work, whether they were really interested in the company’s stock or not.
Google really was known for search, first and foremost from the beginning. As the other answerer said, some people use google as a verb. The word yahoo just doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, when used the same way.
I have used them both a lot, and I’ve never felt that either was better than the other. The results are usually very, very similar. What few differences there are, usually don’t make one any better than the other.
I have had people tell me that Google was a lot better than Yahoo, but have not been able to give me a concrete example of doing the same search on Yahoo as on Google and said how Google was better. It is a perception but it is a very strong perception.
If nothing catastrophic happens to Google, I doubt that Yahoo will close the gap any time soon. But with PPC revenues increasing as fast as they are, even if Yahoo continues to lose just a percent or two of market share a year, Yahoo should continue to be a player.