Small businesses boosted their spending and shifted dollars away from Google and Yahoo! in Q2 2010, according to the “State of Small Business Online Advertising Q2 2010” report from WebVisible. Ask.com benefited, while spending on Bing was steady.
Click rates were down slightly on Google and Bing while growing on Yahoo! quarter over quarter, but compared with Q2 2009, clicks were up across all search engines.
Conversions were up substantially, both on an annual and a quarterly basis, with 43.3% of clicks resulting in a website conversion and 6.9% in a phone call.
In addition, conversion activity was up across a variety of goals. The share of conversions that included video views, form fills, printing driving directions and bookmarking the site doubled since Q2 2009.
Search ad spending by small businesses increased only slightly over Q1, but was up 159% over last year. Small businesses also continued steadily upping the number of keywords they purchased.
“Over the past year, conversion activity increased on almost all website actions,” said WebVisible CEO Kirsten Mangers, in a statement. “For advertisers this is great news. The more options a company provides, the more actions a website visitor will take—giving advertisers multiple opportunities to establish a connection with each potential buyer.”
eMarketer predicts that overall, US search ad spending will be up 15.7% this year, to $12.4 billion.
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Check out today’s other article, “LiveWorld Touts Online Health Conversation and Community.”