In complete contradiction to my previous post about the power of Google, and their tools...a study was released this week, polling marketers about their conversion stats. The marketers were buying media on search engines...thru WebSideStory.

"Web analytics firm WebSideStory released a study showing the following conversion stats across their many clients:

AOL traffic 6.17%
MSN traffic 6.03%
Yahoo traffic 4.07%
Google traffic 3.83%"

Conversion rate is defined as the number of clicks, it takes, to generate a action...it might be sale,lead, or download. (so based on the above info, 6.17 out of every 100 clicks in AOL traffic, generates a conversion for the advertiser)

So, it would appear that Google is the least effective. AOL is most effective for ROI.

This is garbage data.

I will go into a few of the reason why it means nothing.

1 - Google is the biggest
2 - Google "pushes" data throught AdSense, meaning they buy media to SHOW relevant contextual keywords - so this data is flawed.
3 - Google has more "testing" going on, so marketers will naturally test more variations of themes, as well as price points -- becasue their bidding system is more robust.
4 - Everyone likes to pile on the big guy.
5 - The study DID not measure data beyond a click, meaning that - if someone clicked on a link in Google for airlines, and went back within 48 hours to complete the sale, it did NOT track latient conversion.....CONVERSION TAKING PLACE AFTER THE CLICK.

But hey, if I worked at AOL, (which I do not) I'd do a massive press release -- I mean MASSIVE...to tout this data that AOL is #1 in conversion rates, from their search traffic...

I'd make sure it (the release) was in the Wall Street Journal, and nearly every place media folks would be.

Guess the AOL/Goog partnership will pay off afterall, for BOTH parties.

I don't believe this data at all, but, what the heck, --- America Online Media Sales should turn this into a HUGE win for their company, and run with some good dat athat supports the fine people at AOL.