Comments

1. Chris Zaharias, September 16, 2009:

   Interesting, Mark, all the moreso since eBay’s in beta with their own internally-built paid search network – AdCommerce – which eBay has been telling the market they are moving to:

   http://bit.ly/v9Mjx

   Are you saying that AdCommerce inventory has been moved from Yahoo to Google, or that search inventory outside the scope of AdCommerce has been moved from Yahoo to Google?

2. Mark Ballard, September 16, 2009:

   Chris, this is search inventory that is separate from the AdCommerce links. Depending on the query you will see either the AdCommerce links, Google links or both.

3. james, September 16, 2009:

   Mark – Google allows you to add negative ’sites’ to search based campaigns. While I haven’t done any testing regarding search partners, do you have data that says adding ‘ebay.com’ as a negative website to a search based campaign does not stop ads from showing up on ebay? or any other Google search partner sites for that matter? I’ll start a test now – but would love to know if you have existing data on it. Thanks!

4. David, September 17, 2009:

   James, I’d love to get those results. As far as I know it is simply not possible to exclude sites from the search network.

   By the way – over here in Germany, Ebay and Google have been partners for quite a while, and I can tell you a LOT of (relatively low quality) traffic is coming from ebay, which more than once made me disable the search network altogether.

   In my opinion, it would be fair if

   a) ebay were deemed a “content network” site or

   b) Google allowed you to placce separate bids for Google search and the search network.

5. Luc, September 17, 2009:

   @James: I thought “add negative sites” on Google was available only for content traffic, not search?

   I would love to know how you exclude sites on search traffic if you know how to do it!

   Thanks!

6. Mark Ballard, September 17, 2009:

   James, you’re right that you can add negative sites to Google search campaigns, but they will only apply to any content ads within those campaigns (if you find otherwise, let us know!). We do recommend taking advantage of this feature for content and we would love to see it apply to search as well.

7. Mark Ballard, September 17, 2009:

   David, thanks for insights. I agree that ultimately advertisers should be able to block any site like a content network site or be able to adjust bids based on observed conversion data for the search network or, even better, individual search network sites (current workarounds can be unwieldy, imprecise and time consuming). In the short-term this would end up hurting Google’s bottom line, but if advertisers get fed up with the search network entirely, it may force their hand.

8. Tad Miller, September 17, 2009:

   The timing of this happening combined with Yahoo reducing payouts to syndicated search partners based on traffic quality, seem suspicious.

   My guess is that e-bay saw the writing on the wall with reduced revenues on Yahoo and came crawling back to Google AdSense because the payouts are better.

   This post explains what the Yahoo Search Partners are thinking about the change http://www.dmueller.com/2009/09/12/domain-names-domains/changes-ahead-for-yahoo-domain-parking-partners/

9. Andrew, September 18, 2009:

   From August to September, I’ve seen a big spike in my Google search network impressions. This addition of eBay to the search partners could definitely be responsible for the increase. Is anyone else seeing a similar increase from Google’s search network?

10. Tom, December 3, 2009:

    The ebay ads have produced quite a bit of sales on my website. I get the ebay customers without the high fees and all the other things I don’t like about selling on ebay. This seems to work especially well on foreign ebay sites using foreign words where often times I am the only link on the bottom.

11. George Michie, December 3, 2009:

    Really interesting, Tom.

    Some of our clients have marginal success on eBay, but for most it’s poor converting traffic. It could be a function of your business. From a quick scan of your site, it seems like you sell hard-to-find, authentic armor, swords, etc…the kind of things people might look for on eBay and have a hard time finding elsewhere. Most of our clients are traditional retailers who find the “bargain hunters” on eBay a tougher sell.

    It just goes to show the importance of studying your own data and recognize that what works for some won’t work for others.

    Have a great holiday season!

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