iEntry 10th Anniversary
RSS
Contact
 |
|
Paid Search Traffic Declines 26%; Who Really Knows Why? 
By: Andy Beal 2009-05-14 Hitwise reports paid search traffic is down 26% over the past 4 weeks (compared to 2008). Surprisingly, the company makes a sweeping statement about the reason for this decline: "This is no doubt a result of cutbacks in marketing spend due to the recession." 
Er, I have some doubt. For one thing, youre own observations raise doubt: "Consistently, brand name terms (such as "travelocity", "orbitz" and "walmart" saw a sharp decrease year over year in the share of paid clicks. For example, 35.75% of clicks on searches for "orbitz" were on paid listings in the four weeks to May 9, 2009. This compares to 46.56% in the same four week period in 2008. This represents a 23% decrease year over year." Is that likely due to a reduction in spend, or Orbitz et al figuring out that they really dont need to spend so much on paid advertising"considering theyre #1 in the organic results? After all, you also state: " search traffic coming from paid listings is decreasing at the expense of organic traffic." Hitwise does a great job of providing us with this type of data, but this serves as a reminder that you can interpret this data any way you want. Only the advertisers"and perhaps the search engines"can tell us whats really going on. Comments Tag: Paid Search Traffic Add to  Del.icio.us |  Digg |  Reddit |  Furl Have a bookmark! -  About the Author: Andy Beal is an internet marketing consultant and considered one of the world's most respected and interactive search engine marketing experts. Andy has worked with many Fortune 1000 companies such as Motorola, CitiFinancial, Lowes, Alaska Air, DeWALT, NBC and Experian. You can read his internet marketing blog at Marketing Pilgrim and reach him at andy.beal@gmail.com. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| SearchNewz
is an iEntry, Inc. ® publication
©
$line) {
echo $line ;
}
?>
All Rights Reserved. Newsletter Archive - Privacy Policy - Legal - Sitemap - Contact Us - RSS Feeds - Newsletter Signup |
