In a “Heard On the Street” column last week, the WSJ’s Martin Peers wrote that the economic slowdown has shown up in online search:
Consumers are cutting back spending so much that they are showing “a reduced desire to even search for new products, much less purchase them,” according to Majestic Research. IAC, whose Ask.com search engine’s ad sales are handled by Google, noted last week that the search trends “have not been good over the last 30 to 60 days … particularly on commercial-oriented queries.”In addition, those consumers still in buying mode are browsing around for bargains more often, thereby reducing the returns on individual clicks. And that is lowering the price marketers are willing to pay for keywords, a point also noted by IAC.
We noticed some PPC slowdown last month in our client work, as well as significant overall traffic declines (despite unchanged or improved visibility on search engines). What was more interesting, however, was a decline in non-search-related visits to many client sites. I’ve wondered if the intense focus on the U.S. presidential election skimmed off a lot of the more casual traffic, including visits from those receiving updates by RSS or email.
One thing’s true, however: just as the stock market’s downturn benefits those with cash to invest at fire-sale prices, a shaking-out of PPC competition will benefit those companies who continue their PPC campaigns, and continue to optimize their websites for better organic-search positioning.
