Hunting for something on America Online’s search site? Beware. You may
be converted.
And it’s not a religious thing, although advertisers do seem to see it
that way. “Conversion” in marketing speak refers to people who start off as
window shoppers and are transformed into customers.
According to a study conducted by WebSideStory, a Web analytics
solutions provider, AOL Search in January generated the best conversion rate
at e-commerce sites (6.17 percent), followed by MSN (6.03 percent), Yahoo
(4.07 percent) and Google (3.83 percent).
The results, made public on Wednesday, were culled from the millions of
users that visit Web sites using WebSideStory’s analytics technology, HBX
Analytics. The study includes traffic from both organic and paid keywords.
“Not all search engines are created equal,” Ali Behnam, senior
digital marketing consultant for WebSideStory, told internetnews.com. “Each search engine has
different demographics. Google, we feel, is more male-oriented and computer
savvy. Yahoo is more family-based. AOL, MSN and Yahoo tend to appeal toward
a more buyer friendly demographic.
Benham said many advertisers divide their ad budgets according to
overall site traffic at search engines. But they should also keep
demographics in mind when deciding where to run their ads.
However, he noted that most search engines don’t provide demographic
data to advertisers.
“If portals can start providing demographic information
to customers, they can make better decisions about how to allocate their
budgets,” Benham said.
Each of the search engines included in the WebSideStory study posted
conversion rates well above the median average for all search engines, which
was 1.97 percent for the month of January, according to the index. This
compares with a median average of 2.3 percent for the last three months of
2005.
And what were most consumers in search of in January? According to
statistics complied by comScore Media Metrix, people wanted to take trips,
improve their health and career and file their tax returns.
According to MediaMetrix stats released Monday, the site that saw
the greatest visitor increase in January was HRBlock.com with 4.3 million
visitors, an increase of 171 percent compared to December.
CareerBuilder
climbed 74 percent over the prior month to 21.2 million visitors while
eDiets more than doubled during that period. And cheap last-minute travel
deals drew 73.9 million visitors to sites, such as Travelocity, Expedia.com,
Trip Network and Priceline.com.
Media Metrix also ranked the top three most visited Web sites. Yahoo
topped the charts, followed by MSN and the Time Warner Network. Google was
ranked fourth.
