Why You Should Put Focus on the Yahoo Bing Network

Posted in Conversion Optimization, Google AdWords

Google recently announced Website Call Conversions (GWCC), giving AdWords users the ability to track online phone call conversions. You may be inclined to take them up on this offering since most searches, 67% according to comScore’s July report, are conducted on Google, but you might be surprised to know how much your online strategy may benefit from using the Yahoo! Bing Network (YBN).

Yahoo! Bing Network Has Exclusive Audience, Ready to Buy:

Although it doesn’t drive a much traffic as Google – YBN accounts for 30% of searches – and that’s not just something to shrug off. In fact, when the Yahoo! Bing Network (YBN) first made its way on the search engine marketing scene in 2012, they released a video including stats from comScore research that showed just how large and valuable the YBN search audience was: YBN reaches 151 million unique searchers, YBN searchers are likely to spend 24% more than the average internet searcher, and 5.4% more than Google searcher, plus 46 million Yahoo Bing users don’t use Google – so the only way to reach them is through YBN.

YBN has Lower Cost Per Click:

According to the “Yahoo! Bing PPC Performance Metrics” report by AdGooroo, Bing and Yahoo have lower cost per click across the six main verticals that account for the majority of total search traffic:


The same study also found that there are 36% fewer active search marketers on YBN to bid against compared to Google, meaning less competition for search engine page results.

Yahoo! Bing Has Higher Call Conversion Rate:

We took a sample of 2.2 million search visitors through March 2014, and found that of the website visitors who call your number, Bing and Yahoo PPC have similar conversion rates to Google PPC, with Bing Organic visitors being 57% more likely to call than Google Visitors.

Call Conversion Rates.001

What This Means for PPC Marketers

Using Google AdWords is a no-brainer when it comes to driving more traffic to your site, but if you’re not using or tracking paid advertising through Yahoo and Bing, you could be missing out on lower cost per click, higher call conversion rates, and an audience you can’t reach through AdWords.

Published September 18, 2014
  • Venkataramana Rolla

    The article looks like written by Yahoo and Bing supporters. Those figures mentioned also not at all sound real. You should know many facts before writing this kind of article. Yahoo fails badly at technical front. Yahoo offers their PPC ads at mail login page and do you know what kind of inconvenience it causes those logging into mail? Perhaps, you do not know, because you wrote this article with an idea to support Yahoo and Bing. Bing also fails at so many aspects of technicality and I have my personal experiences to reveal. This kind of low facts intended article wouldn’t do any help to Yahoo and Bing at all.

  • Curt

    The cpc figures may be correct, but what it doesn’t mention is if you just want to advertise call extensions, you have be in the top 2 spots or they do not show. This in turn causes the actual cost of advertising for the intent of just calls much more costly on bing….very misleading.

    • Curt, thanks for weighing in. The call conversion rate stats that we compiled are based on calls received after the visitor clicks the ad and goes to the website, not calls from a call extension on the search results page.

      While Google, Yahoo, and Bing do handle call extensions a bit differently, I don’t expect that to have an impact on the call conversion rate after the visitor reaches the website. In fact, not displaying the call extension could even increase the on-website call conversion rate, since some callers would have called from the ad extension instead of the website.

      • Curt

        Ah, that makes sense. Yes, if the user takes the time to go to the website, they are highly motivated and interested, so call conversion rates are high at that point.

        If calling from an ad for an immediate need, which most mobile phone users are looking for immediate gratification, the costs are much higher at bing than some other search engines. The breakage rate to send the user to the url before making a call is huge. If that simple functionality of only showing the call extension and not the url were actually a possibility, the call conversion rate would have a much larger impact to ROI on advertisers.

  • Pingback: Effects of Local Knowledge Graph on Branded Search | SEJ()

  • Pingback: Google is Killing Branded Search Traffic From Mobile Phones: Here’s How to Fix The Issue – Social Media Strategies()

  • Pingback: eMarketing Wall()

  • Pingback: Google is Killing Branded Search Traffic: Here’s How to Fix The Issue()

  • Pingback: Google is Killing Branded Search Traffic From Mobile Phones: Here’s How to Fix The Issue()

(888) 907-4718 Sign Up Free
Support Sign In