Ask.com and AOL: If You Place Ads There, Clicks Will Come

In an earlier study, Chitika Insights analyzed click through rates for web browsers, helping to show which browsers were most valuable to advertisers. But what about search engines? Does the search engine you use influence your likelihood of clicking on an ad?

Google, the undisputed market share leader, in our data set, actually has the lowest CTR of major search engines. Despite Google’s low CTR, their three-quarter share of the market still makes them a dominant force given their sheer volume of traffic.

Ask.com users click on the most ads in our data set, showing up with a whopping 2.6% click through rate. We believe this has to do with the long length of their users’ search queries. In an earlier study, Insights found that Ask.com users average over 4.5 words per query, and even type searches with words counts of 8 and above 15% of the time. Ask tends to cater toward a less tech-savvy user base, prompting their users to pose their search queries as a full and complete question. Many studies have found associations between lower technical proficiency and a higher likelihood of clicking on ads, so it’s not a huge surprise that Ask would dominate the market in CTR.

AOL, which happens to be powered by Google search, showcases the second highest overall CTR. In fact, AOL returns very similar results to Google, but their ads get clicked on twice as often. Given that the search results are essentially the same, this may be a testament to minor format changes and differences in their user demographic. AOL users are some of the most likely to click on ads.

Publishers should understand the differences in click through rates from the various search engines so that they can properly optimize their mix of traffic volume and CTR. For example, some ads are banner ads which pay per impression – in this case publishers only gain in maximizing volume. However, publishers who are earning on a CPC basis should perhaps be considering smaller volume search engines with higher click through rates in order to properly monetize their Search Engine marketing efforts.