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Who wins in a Google fight? A paid listing or a map listing? A first page natural listing or a #1 paid listing? You might be suprised what we found...

We have been advertising for a dental client over the last year on Adwords, and Google Maps. We have also done his SEO. This client has what we like to call the Google TRI-FECTA (they rank high with all 3 listings). With one website performing well in all 3 spaces, we were curious how each medium performed against each other. We took results from the last 4 months, and dug up some info in Analytics. Here’s what we found:

This dentist's campaign is focused on lead generation. Customers come to the website and sign up on a form that offers web only discounts on dental services. Overall there were 59 goal conversions.

We broke down these conversions even further:

Total Conversions:

• Organic- 28
• Paid- 12
• Direct Traffic- 10
• Facebook- 3
• Other- 5

Not coming as too much of a suprise, organic traffic and conversions easily beat out paid traffic. What is most suprising though, is how the map listing performed:

From a simple business listing with Google Places, there was a 3.54% action rate, with a 2.38% click through rate for visits to the website. That compared to .84% click through rate with Adwords. Obviously, a limitation in this reporting is that we don't have conversion tracking for the map listing; however, the amount of traffic to the webiste ads up to just 80 out of the 491 total organic clicks!

What conclusions can we draw from this? Let's break it down:

• Organic Listing- The main source of conversions for this dentist. Limited in the cost and time it would take to optimize for multiple keywords. Appeals to majority of internet users.
• Paid Listing- Minimal conversions, but covered many more variations of long tailed keywords than organic. Appeals to clients wanting to cover hundreds of keyword variations.
• Maps- Great cost efficiency (depending on what local seo company you use). Not as trusted as the organic listings. Appeals to searches that want a map to see where a dentist is located/how close they are.

So can a Google maps listing beat out a paid and natural listing? Not in this case. But the traffic generated from the combination of these three mediums together may be unbeatable. We will post in a month or two on the results without any paid listings.

-Luke

In Star Wars Anakin and Luke Skywalker brought balance to the force. In Lord of the Rings it was Frodo. Now for search and display markets balance is being brought back with the formation of the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance (sorry there probably won't be any movies made about this one).

"When the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance is implemented, both companies will continue to have differentiated consumer search experiences. However, Microsoft will manage the technology platforms that deliver the algorithmic (powered by Bing) and paid (powered by adCenter) search results."

 In an email sent out to current Bing and Yahoo advertisers they outlined a few details:

• The program will start in Fall and you will be able to reach over 15 million searchers.
• All accounts will be transferred beginning in late summer and will be ready by the time the holiday season rolls around. If any account has the possibility of missing the holiday season, their transfer will be put off until after the holidays.
• Big budget clients will have customer service by Yahoo and small budget clients by Microsoft.
• Regular communication and tools will be provided to aid in the transition.

What will this mean for advertisers? It means that Google is now going to have some more competition. According to the most recent statistics on search market share, Bing controls 11.7%, Yahoo 16.9%, and Google 65.1%. After the alliance it will be 65.1% VS 28.6% for the big two search engines. The competition will be GREAT for us advertisers. Competition spurs growth, right?

What are your thoughts on the search alliance? Will YaBing! outperform Google? Will market share decrease for the alliance? Keep checking back to the Get Found First blog and we will keep you posted!

-Luke