I wanted to touch on a subject that I find interesting. With the recent appearance of YPN in the PPC market, Google has a major competitor. The questions was asked today at the Affiliate Summit conference about Google favoring Adsense publishers in the search engines and even penalizing YPN publishers. I spoke with a gentleman at the conference that tested YPN in place of his Adsense and he within a few weeks saw his Google traffic drop by several hundred visits daily. Now while this is intriguing to me, I am quite skeptical. I understand why Google “might” want to do this, but at the same time it doesn’t seem very Google-like to do that. On the same note, I am not convinced that Google favors Adsense Publisher in the search engine results. Google wants top quality search results and that is their main focus. I don’t see them taking the fact I am an Adsense Publisher and giving me a higher position than a non-Adsense publisher.
All in all, I don’t know what Google is up to. I don’t know if Yahoo! is doing any of this as well. It is definitely something to watch and if you have heard stories (good or bad) or experienced something yourself, please let me know.
Well, I’ve found just the opposite. Up until last October, 50% of my traffic was generated from natural searches in yahoo. I’m number 1 in their directory under the keyword, but in other natural searches in the web, I received most of my traffic. Only 8% was from Google.
And yet I worked on Google search placement because I wanted to raise my keyword natural SE placement. Low and behold my yahoo traffic dropped. Signicantly so much that when I do a search for my website under the keywords that (even the ones I’m naturally number 1 in google) my site is no where to be found. Then Yahoo search marketing contacts me.
I’m stuck. I sign up….and now am paying to have my ads on yahoo to try to make up for that traffic I’ve lost when my site disappeared from their search engines.
I’ve asked yahoo and have received no explanation how I can be #1 in their directory but my site isn’t in their search engine where I can find it.
I’m going to drop my yahoo search marketing within a few months….and when yahoo calls again I’m going to try to explain my theory.
They dropped me in their search engine (as number one) to gain an advertiser. At least it is my theory.
Sounds like a very flawed theory Kathy.
I myself mainly use Yahoo! search. I have been online for years and it is just natural… I am used to yahoo, it was around when google wasn’t. That said, 9 times out of 10 the sites I land on have Adsense ads placed on them. These are the same sites that are dominating YAHOO search results, I found the websites through YAHOO….
There are many factors when considering your rankings in the search engines and often is easier to blame the search engine than yourself. Perhaps changing the code around changed another element of the page that hurts rankings. Maybe there is more competition for those keywords now. Maybe if you spent more time improving your site for actual users your site would still be up high in the rankings. But how are we to tell? All the search engines keep their search algo’s so secretive.
Let’s see then:
Currently under *the* main keyword search:
I’m naturally #1 in google…
I’m naturally #1 in Yahoo directory
And in yahoo web search I used to be #1-#8 in yahoo web search…But since October 2005 I’m no where to be found.
I then get a call from yahoo search marketing department selling adversiting to me YPN. Hmmmm….
I’[ve been online with my site since 1998, have the largest, most trafficked website in this keyword category. Having over 161,000 pages indexed in Google.
I find it odd to be natural #1 in Google, yahoo directory but the web search drops me. I find it more than odd. I find is suspicious.
I also find it odd you would make this statement:
” Maybe if you spent more time improving your site for actual users your site would still be up high in the rankings.”
You apparently do not know me or my site….
and you apparently want to hide behind a “no name”.
I’m not saying that google are up to anything, but it would make sense for them to give sites with their ads on more traffic than those with yahoo ads, simply because they want more money. Do you actually know how much money google make, I’d need a fraction of that and I could retire.
Not all search engines use the same algo’s. It is possible that there are some better sites for the keyword than your site according to yahoo. Doesn’t mean yahoo is favouring non adsense users. Besides their program isn’t even international and they only accept US publishers so it would be a bit soon for them to pull anything like favouring Yahoo publishers over adsense when there aren’t enough sites yet.
But I agree this is a area that we need to closely look at over the next few years when it will be possible google will favour google publishers and yahoo could favour yahoo publishers in their search’s. It does not appear to be the case as of yet.
And using a name like Kathy is just as private as a name ‘Some One’. I still don’t know who you are even if you give me your first name…