Tue 19th of January, filed under PPC
Google PPC booming
Google PPC advertising has bounced back emphatically with the news that it now accounts for three out of every four impressions.
According to the Efficient Frontier Search Engine Performance Report, the web giant was responsible for 74.4 per cent of all ad clicks in the fourth quarter of 2009, reports Search Engine Land. That is an impressive turnaround for the company, which watched its share of the PPC market slip from 72.3 per cent in the first quarter to 72.1 per cent in the second and 71 per cent in the third.
Bad news for Bing
Of course, last year saw the high-profile launch of Bing – the successor to MSN Live Search. Microsoft saw its share of PPC rise steadily from 3.5 per cent in the first quarter to 3.9 per cent in the second and 4.7 per cent in the third. However, these figures make discouraging reading as Microsoft's share actually fell back slightly to 4.6 per cent in the fourth.
The research will also be a serious cause for concern at Yahoo. Its share plummeted from 24.3 per cent in the first quarter to 21 per cent in the fourth.
Microsoft and Yahoo will hope to mount a sustained challenge on Google's PPC share once their merger is finally concluded. Last summer, they signed a deal that will see Bing ultimately power all Yahoo search results. As part of the agreement, Microsoft adCenter will also take over as the sole PPC platform for both companies.
When Bing first arrived, a number of studies seemed to indicate that Microsoft could be a major threat to Google's dominant position in PPC. Search advertising network Chitika, for example, reported that Bing users click on 55 per cent more ads than Google.
Posted by Richard Frost
