As a company that advertises ONLINE, I welcome a bit of competition to Google’s hold on search.
Here at “Urban Auto Insurance” we have found that the Keywords were want to buy require we bid $7 to $15 per click- That price is insane; so any other real choice would be good.

I’m very excited with the results realized from the investment in Yahoo / Bing, my sales have increased and have had many positive results. I thank all of the Yahoo / Bing the fine job…

While someone needs to slay the google dragon, Yahoo and Bing need to work hard to preserve current relationships or they will be eaten.

Not that search advertising on Google is ‘great’ because it is not, but Yahoo!/Microsoft/Bing are by comparison significantly more expensive, less reliable, less consistent, and based upon our financial experiences with both over the last 6 years have paused all Yahoo! search advertising.

We sell a product we manufacture. We use similar keywords and ad content on both platforms. Over the history, Yahoo! was the clear winner in 2009 for number of conversions and conversion cost.

For example, for the 6 months from 5/09-10/09 our spend was $3,500, our conversions were about 300 @ $13.00 per conversion.

For the 6 months from 11/09-4/10 our spend was $3,000, our conversion were about 30 @ over $100.00 per conversion.

We verified that the tracking codes were correct to make sure conversions were being reported correctly as in our testing found that conversions were being recorded.

The Yahoo!/Microsoft paid search must be operating under different algorithms than previously. I spoke with them and followed advice on changes to campaigns which resulted in increased cost, no additional conversions, and a waste of time. I was ignorant in expecting Yahoo! staff’s recommendations to be worthwhile. It was a huge financial and time waste.

I periodically resume a couple of campaigns to observe current status and it seems not to change for better or worse.

Google, meanwhile is running about $1,500 per month with 30-40 conversions @ approx. $27.00 each. The conversion cost is higher than we would like but it is consistent and we work to bring it down.

In 2008-2009 our ad search spend was in excess of $4,000 per month and was generally cost effective.

In 2011 our ad search spend is capped at $2,000 and is cost effective, but a requires much more time to maintain campaigns as the metrics seem to be constantly changing.

Hello,

The timing is right for us to come to the party. People are looking for a SMARTER Search alternative that supports Small Business Owners interests. We have a superior Business Model to theirs and when the timing is right we will enter with a splash. Stay Tuned !

Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)

I’ve advertised on Yahoo, Bing, and Google, and while I’ve heard people say that Bing has been awesome for them, my campaigns have never gotten any traction from them. The same campaigns on Yahoo were doing awesome, getting great traffic, and since the move to Bing, I see almost nothing from both of them. I’ve even reached out to Bing and while they made some changes, it didn’t change anything.

But that said, we rank really nicely on many keywords in Bing and see very little traffic from them. Not sure why.

And related to this their UI for managing campaigns. The web UI is horribly slow and clunky (and was down earlier today?) and the Windows app is huge and has a worst UI than the Google AdWords download (which I think is horrible). It would make creating ads so much easier if this was seamless and easier to change.

Just my two cents…

Google has become impossible to deal with. I am not using Adwords but I had Adsense on some of my sites. Few days ago, they issued me a warning saying tthat I am not complying with their policies and have three days to make changes. I deleted the Adsense codes from all of my sites. Yahoo and Bing need to step up and end Google’s dominance.

I most often like to cheer for the underdog but the suggestion of putting Microsoft in that position makes it very difficult.

I used yahoo, ask jeeves and numerouse other search engines, and do you know why i stick with google? because everytime i dont find what im looking for on other search engines, i usually find it when i use google, and i think thats why google will always be top. Unless bing can provide the same sources as google, i dont see it taking over the market.

I don’t use yahoo at all for search and lately even the yahoobuzz has been bad. codes not working very frustrating. I admire people like yourself who go the extra mile to write techie stuff and stats. good job.

I feel pay per click is one of method to build our brand in internet, but it is not eficient when comparing money back efffect. So,.. we should change our strategy in order to achieve income with best natural searching visitor.

Bing is definitely providing better quality results, but on the whole, it’s way behind Google. I just wish that Bing would get much better and provide some real competition to Google’s search monopoly.

Id quite like to see bing, yahoo or any other search engine become as popular as google, as much as ive always relied on google id quite like to see what lengths they would take if say bing became the no1 SE

I do agree that google sometimes abuse their power however I don’t see yahoo and bing dominating over google.
It’s a bit hard to predict though, I used to think nothing will take down myspace but then facebook happened, so maybe yahoo+bing will overtake google.