How do your PPC costs compare? Should you take a closer look at Bing
The latest Q3 2010 paid search market data from Efficient Frontier gives some interesting insights into the big 3 Search Engines. In short it shows an increase in activity on Bing (Up 90% in Q3 2010) & Google while Yahoo saw drops. Why is this interesting? Well, we know that Microsoft have been working hard on Bing to try and claw its way back into the lucrative Search market and the current data is showing positive signs that they are succeeding.
* Data from Efficient Frontier report - CPC Graph
This is an important trend to recognise as a business. Most people focus their Paid Search efforts on Google due to the volume of traffic available there. This presents an opportunity on growing search engines like Bing especially considering that Bing now serves all Yahoo paid search results (see here for more information). With Christmas fast approaching and the requirement as ever to increase reach and push sales Bing should be researched as an option for your business.
If you can spare a trial budget I would highly recommend taking some of your top performing keywords (for both volume & conversion) and placing them into relevant campaigns / groups within Bing. Make sure you tag all the URL's so you can monitor & compare vs Google in your Analytics package. If you cannot spare the budget do consider switching off some of your poorer performing keywords in Google and shifting to Bing to test what impact this has on your business.
Bing Paid Search : Click Here