Friday, August 13, 2004
Yahoo! and Google / Different Audiences, Right?
No links on this one but I recently posted on a forum about the audiences Yahoo and Google cater to and why they're different. I'm still amazed most folks don't understand this yet.Experience has proven that while the major search engines are just that, major search engines, they still have core followings of users. Seems like everyone is on the "niche search engine" bandwagon these days because that's where the highly targeted content lies and the highest conversion rates. While that may be true, the major search engines also have distinct sets of users and conversion levels and traffic levels can be drastically different based on the type of site for Yahoo and Google. While MSN and Yahoo do incredibly well for retail sites, Google does better with technology and information sites. Just looking at the marketing message of the two makes this clear.
Yahoo's two main products are Overture and Yahoo. Both have unique marketing focuses and are equally sexy. Overture appeals to the Madison Avenue Ad Executives because it's so clean and crisp while Yahoo appeals more to the person on the go that needs their search engine to be all things to all people (a.k.a. Life Engine). Then Google on the other hand is an another kind of animal in it's own right. It's got an overly simplified interface and logo to boot. It uses lego colors as the theme and focuses on relevance and speed. The motto there is "less fluff more stuff" and it's apparent in their products.
My point is you must know who your target audience is and seek out venues to focus your marketing efforts on. While Barry's site see's little traffic from Yahoo and the majority from Google, there are thousands of sites with completely the opposite results. It's like the warning label on a bottle of medicine. "Use with caution, results may vary".
Posted By Jason Dowdell at 12:39 PM
Permanent Link: Yahoo! and Google / Different Audiences, Right?
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