Report: Yahoo Gains Marketers, Ad Share

Apr 13, 2009 at 12:24pm ET by Greg Sterling

SEM tool provider AdGooroo today released a report that explores ad coverage per keyword among the big three engines in Q1 2009; it’s a hypothetical proxy for search revenues. The report concludes, among other things, that Yahoo has gained advertiser share and coverage (largely at Microsoft’s expense) during the quarter:

The biggest surprise this quarter, however, is a possible comeback for Yahoo!, which had been losing ground to Live Search since September. AdGooroo tracked a 10 percent increase in active first-page advertisers during the first quarter, suggesting that Yahoo! may have finally hit its stride. This coincides with a four point increase in advertiser share which appears to be at Microsoft’s expense. It would not be surprising to see strong numbers coming out of Yahoo! this month.

Here are some high level takeaways and charts from the report:

Approximately 42 percent of Google keywords contain no ads throughout the course of a given month; 13 percent have only one ad; 15 percent have ten or more ads.
Live Search is similar to Google in that keywords tend to have either no ads (33 percent) or a full page of them (30 percent have seven or more ads).
Yahoo! search results pages tend to have the most ads. Only 18 percent of Yahoo! keywords displayed no ads, while 41 percent of keywords displayed eight or more.

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We’ll see how accurate these data are and whether they are a reliable barometer of search revenues on April 21, when Yahoo reports quarterly earnings. There are indications here and there that Yahoo’s search share may have grown somewhat in recent months.

Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land, and writes a personal blog Screenwerk, examining the broader world of media and advertising. He also posts at a Local Mobile Search, which is focused on the mobile Internet.

See more articles by Greg Sterling >

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