Clickthrough Rate Analysis: Bing vs. Google vs. Yahoo!

Back in July, the Chitika research team looked at how often Bing users clicked on ads when compared to Google and Yahoo! users. Bing users showed a 50% higher ad click rate than Googlers, so at the time our preliminary conclusion was that Bing’s success was being driven in a big part by Microsoft’s huge, expensive advertising blitz.

Now that December is upon us, and Bing keeps showing its ability to push Google from a technology standpoint, they decided to revisit and see how the numbers were looking. As it turns out, Bing users are still clicking on ads at a prodigious rate – in fact, the CTR of users who come to the Chitika network via Bing is over 75% higher than those who come from Google.

Now, it must be mentioned that Bing is still a distant third place in terms of traffic sent – Google dominates with 84% of search traffic, followed by Yahoo! at 7.40%, and Bing holding at 5.75% (AOL and Ask both have just over 1% of search traffic coming into the Chitika network). However, all things being considered the same, driving one Bing user (or AOL or Ask user) to your site can be more valuable than driving one Google user.

The Raw Numbers:

Search Engine	Ad Clicks	Impressions	Ad CTR	% of Search	CTR Vs. Google
AOL	42,597	1,706,858	2.50%	1.27%	253.56%
Ask	34,437	1,958,490	1.76%	1.45%	178.65%
Bing	134,536	7,741,724	1.74%	5.75%	176.57%
Google	1,115,452	113,332,938	0.98%	84.13%	100%
Yahoo!	136,506	9,972,035	1.37%	7.40%	139.08%

Numbers are based on a sample of traffic from the Chitika advertising network.

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Clickers Are More Likely to Click

People who search by clicking the button on Google’s homepage are fifty percent more likely to go on to click an ad than people who search by any other Google means, according to online ad network Chitika. The study, which looked at just over 11 million impressions, shines a light on the possibility and importance of being able to predict web users’ activity.

When comparing the different types of traffic that come through their advertising network, the researchers at Chitika compared the different types of Google traffic – people who click on the “Google Search” button, people who search by hitting the enter key, people who search from browser toolbars, etc. While the overall clickthrough rate for the entire Google-searching sample was 0.95%, the people who searched by clicking on the search button at Google.com clicked ads at a 1.56% rate, over half again higher.

Type	Impressions	Clicks	CTR
All Google Searches	10,307,849	97,440	0.95%
Google Button Clicks	767,209	11,934	1.56%

But the question becomes, why such a high disparity? Why are people who type in their query and hit enter so much less likely to click on an ad than someone who performs a search differently through the same website?

“Sophistication is my guess,” says Rand Fishkin, SEO guru and CEO of SEOMoz.org. ”Hitting enter means you’re not moving your hands away from the keyboard and likely indicates a more tech-savvy (and hence, click-sensitive) individual.”

So it appears that advertising click rates are inversely proportional to the “tech-savviness” of the people receiving the ads. By defining a user’s tech-savviness, it’s possible that ad networks going forward will be able to target better and better, driving revenue for websites while showing less ads.

Amazon Mechanical Turk review

I recently ran across the Amazon Mechanical Turk in my endless quest for finding a job. Seeing that they were a reputable company, I signed and gave it a shot. Here is a review of my first week of using this program.

Signup for Mechanical Turk from Amazon is fast, simple and easy. It probably took less than a minute to go for the money making part of the program. Mechanical Turk calls these HITs and they are just small jobs that people need doing. You can scroll through the hits and choose which tasks you want to work on. The work is extremely simple, such as commenting on blogs, labeling images, rewriting sentences or paragraphs, writing short articles, and other easy works. The problem is that Mechanical Turk pay only what those tasks are worth. A penny or so for the labeling of images, perhaps 50 cents for the rewrite of a few paragraphs, $1.50 for putting up 15 posters, etc. So this is not a place to get rich.

While most of the tasks at Mechanical Turk pays only menially at best, there are tasks that pays $5 or more. Usually, this involves writing articles, rewriting articles, writing fairly extensive reviews, etc. While you could possibly make money doing this, it is probably better use of your time to work on something else. However, if you are unemployed or unable to work outside of the home Mechanical Turk may still be a source of income for you. In addition, some HITs offer bonuses for quality work. I have not met one of these HITs to determine the probability of obtaining a bonus so I can't really comment on them. Once a HIT was accepted, you have a deadline to complete the HIT, but in my experience, the period is much longer than necessary.

Payments on Mechanical Turk is quite fast, usually within a day in my experience. Payments are put into your Amazon Payments account. Payments may be transferred to a bank account or used on Amazon.com.

Although payments on Amazon's Mechanical Turk will not make anyone rich, the program is a little addictive. Once you get rolling, it is difficult to stop. I have sat for 15-20 minutes to complete 10 and 20 cent HITs only because they were fun. If you spend much time on the Internet playing games you might as well become addicted to completing HITs on Amazon's Mechanical Turk and make some money.

Top 10 ways to get people online to read your Business Blog

There are many advantages of running a blog, on top of your business website. A blog is an online diary, whereby you can easily posts clips about yourself, your thoughts and your personal life. If you publish a business blog, you posts good content, articles, breaking news or just about anything to build awareness of what you are selling.

Publishing a business blog gives your subscriber or prospect a chance to get to know you better. Through your blog, you can explain how your life has changed due to the product or service that you are selling. A blog can also be highly interactive if you also allow comments and for all to see. For sure, blogging provides a good avenue to establish some level of trust and security for an online prospect who has never met you.

Here are top 10 ways to get people to read your business blog:

1. Have a general theme and state this theme at the top or in a prominent location in your blog. Creating a general theme helps attract a group of targeted readers. However, do strike a balance. You don't also want too narrow a theme. Otherwise, you may find yourself having difficulty finding new things to talk about in your blog every few days.

2. Be current in what you post. Don't report about events that happen one year ago. You can refer to the particular event if relevant and/or via a link. For these past events, assume that people already know about them.

3. Keep a regular schedule. When readers return to your blog, they want to read about something new. Be sure to manage your readers' expectations.

4. Post frequently. Search engine spiders love sites that are constantly updated with fresh content. At the very least, posting once every few days is a good idea.

5. Keep your posts short and clear. Don't post long essays. Blog readers are known to like to zip in and out of online diaries. Keep your long essays to articles that you can publish on a separate webpage or in your newsletter.

6. Make your tittle keyword-rich. This helps in getting your posts better ranked by search engine spiders via the keywords that you use.

7. Post interesting content. No one is going to be interested in what you ate for breakfast. Not unless you are maintaining a food blog and you want to post your breakfast recipe! Making your content interesting will ensure that your readers continue to read your blog loyally.

8. Have a unique perspective. Readers are interested to know what you think. If you are offering your opinion, be sure that you are able to qualify them.

9. Take note of your language and grammer. Even if you are posting an opinion. It is always safer to write in proper English if you are hoping to monetize from your blog.

10. Don't forget to have a RSS feed. RSS means 'Rich Site Syndication'. To increase readership and distribution, this is one thing that you must not omit in doing.