The impact of Yahoo's Panama on click-through rates was the top-of-mind question yesterday morning at investment bank Jefferies & Co.'s Internet conference.
Consensus answer of performance
marketers and analytics company was that it's too soon to make any generalizations. But expect the issue to stay front and center for the next few months.
Advertisers are expected to modify some
of their spending as their experience with the new system becomes more developed.
Here was the official Jefferies take on the situation:
The launch of Yahoo's Panama system in early
February appears to have revved up keyword bidding on Yahoo as advertisers and search engine marketers jockey for position. For example, an advertiser that might lose a top position, since the
algorithm goes from ranking advertisers on bid price only to bid price popularity, may decide to experiment with the new platform and drastically raise the bid price in order to keep a top-tier
position. For these reasons, Jefferies notes that it's too early to understand the full effects of Panama on CPCs across the Yahoo network and on the industry as a whole.
Speaking of search, here are the January 2007 Nielsen//Net Ratings rankings for top search providers, based on the total number of queries conducted at the provider.
Google Search
53.7% share
(based on 3,862,374,000 searches)
Yahoo Search
22.7% share (based on 1,629,995)
MSN/Windows Live Search
8.9% (based on 642,694)
AOL Search
5.4% (based on 388,966)
Ask.com Search
1.8% (based on 132,800)
My Web Search
0.9% (based on 65,819)
Dogpile.com Search
0.6% (based on 41,991)
Earthlink Search
0.5% (based on 36,604)
Comcast Search
0.4% (based on 32,001)
BellSouth Search
0.4% (based on 30,824)