Exposing CTRs Of The Major Engines: Bing Beats Google, But AOL King Of Clicks

According to ad network Chitika, Bing users are demonstrating a willingness to click on ads more often than Google users. This is consistent with similar data the company released in July of this year that showed Bing outperforming Google with click-through rates (CTR). The data come from a sample of well over 100 million impressions on Chitika’s network.

The company said CTRs on “Bing [are] over 75% higher than those who come from Google.” However, AOL users show the greatest CTRs at 2.5 percent.

An important caveat to all this is that Google’s search volumes are much higher than Bing’s or AOL’s so the ratio of clicks to impressions is necessarily going to be lower. The same number of clicks against a greater number of impressions will produce a lower CTR. The real question is whether the same Bing/Ask/AOL CTRs would be sustained at higher traffic volumes.

Earlier studies have also shown lower “conversion rates” for Google vs. other engines. Previously, comScore data have shown different and higher CTRs for the various engines.

Postscript: It was suggested to me in an email that the reason that Google’s competitors see these higher clicks is because they put ads more often in the top-center of the page.