Higher paid clickthrough rates for Google

30th May 2008

Google has reported higher paid clickthrough rates for April while other leading search engines have posted declines in their performance.

Rising 20 per cent compared to April last year, Google's US paid clickthrough rate has now reached its best since November 2007 according to data from comScore.

Clickthrough rates are calculated by dividing the total number of searches carried out by the number of sponsored clicks.

"With fewer advertisements and more paid clicks, it appears that Google's advertising relevancy initiative is beginning to work," said Clayton Moran, an analyst at Stanford Group.

Yahoo! saw a year on year decline in its clickthrough rate of four per cent, while Microsoft's MSN saw its rate fall by nine per cent.

Google also posted a 33 per cent increase in web search queries in April compared to the same month last year, CNET News reports.

Meanwhile research from comScore reveals that clickthrough rates tend to be lower on pages with universal search results, for example weather, maps and share prices.