Comments on Google vs Yahoo on Flash and seo.

Entireweb Newsletter * November 14, 2006 * ISSUE #283

I saw the following in my email, and thought this guy has some good thoughts but other parts of it is quite literally a load of crap. Google's bot can read flash. Saying that one should not build sites with flash is perhaps going a bit too far.


Using flash judiciously along with rich text formatting is in truth the methodology best suited to building sites that will be appealing to both search engines and users.


The factoid that i take great exception to is where our friend attempts to categorize Google and Yahoo. He says that Google is business to business while Yahoo is mostly for consumers. My own adwords and Overture campaigns say that it depends on the sector being discussed.

In general, I have said before that while Google's popularity can work against it, that the older more mature group, grew up with Yahoo and that many of those people in decision making positions in companies may use Yahoo out of habit.

Our opinions on this differ strongly, and while none of us may be entirely correct, ad campaigns run on both search engines do seem to consistently show that the sectors that do well on Yahoo or Google outperform very consistently on the particular search engine platform that they do well on.

So for limousines and taxi services my Google ads outgun Overture consistently while nearly all my business to business ad-campaigns on Overture outperform my similar Google ads by a margin which has to be seen to be believed.

Below is the email that i received today.

More pointers for a good search engine listing

Worse, website designers are still building sites with Flash. Flash is great. Flash is startling. It looks terrific as all those images come cascading in a blizzard of light, shade and colour. The only problem is - guess what? - the robots can't figure it out. They are puzzled, bemused, unable to grasp what is going on. The result is that they go somewhere else, probably to a site where the designer has laid everything out on a simple plate for them.

Until the search engine programmers figure out a way to write algorithms that understand Flash presentations, the simple, no-nonsense, text-based sites will continue to win hands down. And by that I mean they will continue to win good listings. Which is the object of the exercise.

To be fair, however, the great majority of web designers have no abiding interest in search engine optimization. They figure that their job is to build a site that is both attractive and interesting. It is therefore up to the site owner to lay down a few rules when commissioning a build - no Frames, no animated gifs and, above all no Flash.

Is Google really the greatest?

And finally, folks, a word about the search engines themselves.

Everybody wants to get a good listing on Google. To them, Google is the be all and end all and that there really is nowhere else to be. What they tend to overlook is that the so-called lesser engines are equally good at pulling business if they are fed properly.

I have a client who receives 80% of his Internet business (which is substantial) via Yahoo, on which he is No 1 for all four of his search terms. Google does very little for him. Why should that be? It's because, when you get down to it, Yahoo is a consumer-oriented engine and Google is predominantly a commercial or business-to-business engine. And his business is geared to the consumer market.

I know that many seo elitists will take issue with me about the efficacy of this statement. So be it. But I will get my retaliation in first by saying that (a) their argument will have to be damn good to convince me and (b), I don't really care what they say.

I say again, its difficult for the average user to discern what is real and not real when there are so many passionate half correct seo consultants publishing information that appears correct.

Adwords or Overture which is better. Result may surprise you.

Overture is Yahoo's equivalent AD display and back end management system.
In truth, overture was a search engine in of itself at one time, but lets not go there.

So amongst online marketers ad agencies and others, there is this oft repeated question which is better ?...
Google's adword system or Yahoo's overture system.

Well there is no doubt that at the moment, Google's management system is significantly better despite Yahoo having had just as much time to get their system up and sparkling.

Significantly better... but what does this mean and if i said, significantly better, I would expect a few of you out there to say, significantly better for what and for whom.

Ahh, now we are getting down to the crux of the matter.

For straight up analysis and backend reporting, I doubt that i will get flamed ( much...) for repeating what many technical adcopy and ad agencies already know. The Google backend system is tops. In the sincerest form of flattery, it is the de facto standard and everyone and their brother who runs a search engine and is selling traffic is either attempting to emulate, reverse engineer it or using it as their benchmark in terms of the feature set and analytical tools.

So, does this mean its very, very good - this backend management system?

No, not really, it simply means it was the best available and for whatever reason, it has stayed that way for quite some time. Any number of pay per click specialists could give you a half dozen very valid ways of improving the google adword system, so its not nearly perfect by any stretch of the imagination. And if you have been in this business for a while, you know why the back end reporting engines haven't been as good as they could have been.

I digress here, but if your company sells an instant gratification product and knew for a fact, that you never got sales between 3pm and 7:30pm on the third Wednesday of every month, perhaps you might turn off your advertising during that time or at the least tune it down significantly. Why, then is it that google only recently allowed you to easily do this, and why is it that you still need to do a highly customized report to even easily see this type of trend.

Ahhh, well, some might say, its because the search engines really did not want you to know this level of detail ...

All this "shadow confusion" did, was to give room to 3rd party groups like Atlas to build a better mousetrap, ha ha.


But, does the fact, that the google adword system in general have the upper hand over Yahoo's overture system mean that Acme's widgets should use this in preference to Yahoo?

Most Pay per click specialists would wisely tell you as a customer.

Test them both, because experience has shown us that its a different set of customers ( demographically ) who use google vs. yahoo.

I have visited this topic once before in this blog and my results then showed that more business users tend to inhabit the overture spectrum and thus several of my customers who were B2B ( Business to business ) had conversion rates on Yahoo that were more than 150% better than Google.

In contrast, a particular customer who ran limousine services seem to do so well from google that there was no persuading this guy to spend one single penny on Yahoo.

So, the answer to this question, is still not black and white.

So, today, you're about to say, hey buddy since you haven't given us any really new information why bother waste our time.

Well, I am here to tell you that here in November my Overture Results have in almost all cases outgunned, outrun, outmanned, outmaneuvered, outOutout my google adwords by a factor of 3-400%.

After scratching my head for a while and digging around in my campaigns to find out what had gone ( wrong ) or right, i came to the conclusion that a significant number of advertisers bidding on the overture terms had simply gone away, leaving bidding at an all-time low for many of these terms.

So, where had my bidding buddies gone? Well, over to Google of course - i think, hey well i didnt go over there and really check... but what i know is that they are simply NOT in overture!

Check out the Google vs. Yahoo financials over the last quarter and see if that doesn't bear out my theory.

Google has done such a fine job of branding that every Tom, Dick & Harry ( Apologies to Tom and Dick and Harry ) thinks that they absolutely have to be on Google.

Well, my boss says we have to be on those google ad thingies to get the first position so that's why i am gonna do...

Well, it could also be that too many of us are tired of using the rather anemic yahoo ad management interface... and it could also be that if any of you were running ads last year this time, you would know that ads promoting retail products did extremely well while b2b business offers going into the XMas season did quite pathetically for many of us.

It could be all of these reasons, a combination or perhaps none at all, but if you are currently running overture ads and google ads, go and check your own results. Depending on the industry that you are in, you may be in for a pleasant surprise.

As of November 2007, I would move a significant portion of my advertising back to Overture simply because it appears as if the sheep have done the opposite.

And for the uninitiated, you never want to get into a bidding war with the sheep. So, the less bidders ( sheep or otherwise ) the better the chance of getting a reasonable or outright low bid for your very valuable keywords.

Btw, sheep always think that they need to be in the number position. Or sometimes its the sheep's BOSS who thinks so, but in any case, you never want to get into a bidding war with the sheep, it just too rarely ever pays.

So, Overture/Yahoo has finally put a better management system into place and things are hopefully... looking a little better for both Yahoo and their ad customers. The new management system is still in Beta, but if you are a US customer it's not hard to get on the Beta testing list.

Adios.