Yahoo share of UK search spend drops again

Julian Sharpe | 11:50 am | July 30, 2008 | Google, News, yahoo

A new report released states that Yahoos share of UK search spend has dropped again in the second quarter, by a further 1.3% to just 10.6% of the market. Yahoo had already suffered a share drop 0.5% in Q1. Meanwhile Googles share of the search spend has increased by 0.6% to 85.4% in Q2 showing its dominance of the market remains.

Brands have stated that Yahoo which has been stuck in search-focused takeover battles with both Microsoft and Google this year isn’t a focal point for their search campaigns, with main budget focus being on Google.

Quotes

David Lengen, head of e-business at Egg parent company Citibank, told NMA, “All of our search budget is geared towards Google. We rarely optimise for Yahoo! and don’t manage the Yahoo! search account like we manage Google. If we want volume, we have to be on Google.”

Likewise, Tom Bennett, marketing director at Confused.com, said, “These numbers don’t surprise me. We don’t have a fixed search budget, so what we look at is purely where we get the best ROI, and that’s on Google basically.”

Andrew Girdwood, head of search at Big Mouth Media, said Yahoo!’s position was weak. “When you look at how long it takes to optimise Yahoo! then report on the success, in many cases its wasting clients’ money. That’s obviously a big problem for Yahoo! to overcome.”

What do we think?

At Lakestarmedia we have a similar attitude like that of Alan Harding, Head of search at Moneysupermarket, and we agreed that value can still be achieved from well-run Yahoo! and Microsoft campaigns.

Although the volume of overall traffic is not as high as Google for obvious reasons the conversions and the resulting ROI is normally above or comparable with Google and the point of online marketing is achieving a positive ROI for your clients. By using a positive media mix you can achieve this, just because it takes longer to optimise for Yahoo does not mean it should be simply dismissed.