May 25, 2007 | Friday
How do the Search Engine Interfaces Compare?
By Jon Myers, Director Of Search in Search Engines |Google |Yahoo |Search Research
With the countdown to ‘Panama’ in full flow, it seems a good time to review where Yahoo stands right now in relation to its competitors in the paid search market, and what agencies like Latitude are hoping Yahoo’s overhaul of its system will deliver.
As is well known, Google dominates the UK from a consumer perspective, as shown by Hitwise recording a consistent +70 per cent share of all searches being made via the Google platform.
And it’s probably fair to say the vast majority of search marketers in the UK perceive Google as having the most flexible and responsive paid search platform. Certainly, that’s a view borne out by a quick survey among search specialists here at Latitude.
Asked to assess and compare the strengths and weaknesses of the platforms, our search teams unanimously agreed that Google has set a high standard in some key areas, most notably, keyword and creatives management; speed of response; depth of analysis and reporting; and multimedia campaign integration.
The following selection of verbatim comments will no doubt be music to the ears of everyone at Google; to my mind, these remarks, and others that were collected during the course of researching this essay, also usefully highlight the scale of the challenge facing Yahoo to close the gap on its main rival.
About Google: “Very Manageable System”, “Can be live in minutes”, “Intuitive graphical user interface”.
About Yahoo: “Difficult to make bulk changes”, “Management of keywords and creatives difficult through interface”, “Reports slow to generate”.
We even went so far as to ask our search experts to rank the functionality of the two interfaces on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 = ‘poor’, 5 = ‘excellent’). Again, the survey sample is too small to be considered ‘statistically significant’ but even these anecdotal results serve only to strengthen the sense of Google’s all-round superiority.
Area/Google /YAHOO!
User management/4.4/2.7
Account management/4.1/3.1
Campaign management/4.6/2.9
Ad management/4.4/2.3
Keyword management/4.6/2.9
Bid landscape/2.7/3.6
Performance estimating/2.7/2.4
Keyword generation/2.7/3.5
Reporting/4.1/2.9
Ease of use of interface/3.9/1.6
The data and reviews above tend to back up most people’s opinion that Google is the biggest traffic delivery system in search for the simple reason it offers the most refined and effective interface available for the search marketing end user.
All in all, the Google system is evidently much more refined than its counterparts. What is surprising, however, is that it has continued to develop so much faster since it was launched. By contrast, the Yahoo system is pretty much the same as when it was introduced back in 2001. Since then there have been no really big developments, just a series of updates and modifications.
In other words, Yahoo has a lot to get right with its new paid search platform.
True, the new system has gone down very well in the United States, where Yahoo appears to be adding to its market share. But will it have the same impact here in the UK?
Certainly, the new system will feature a very Google-type environment, with its ‘opaque’ bid landscape and CPC x CTR x Quality Index model for ranking results to search queries. It also promises better functionality in the overall management of keywords and creatives, as well as much better ‘targetability’, such as for local and mobile search.
As ever in life, the proof will be in the eating of the pudding. And with the Panama launch now only a matter of weeks away, search marketers will not have to wait very long before they find out just what Yahoo has managed to put in place to close the gap and improve the options for search marketers here in the UK.
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