Interesting article by Joe Pilotta on the Purchase Influence of major search engines.

Influence of Internet Advertising on Purchase Decisions by Search Engine Preference

It could be argued, rightfully so, that many of my clients (ie: Architects) might be better off advertising on Yahoo/Overture PPC than Google (Home Improvement).  On the other hand, if your selling food items or clothing then AOL might be more effective (via Google PPC). Joe goes on to say ……

What this means for advertisers and marketers: Yahoo is the best place for internet advertising to have a direct effect on purchase decision by category of merchandise.

Experience looking at referral and conversion logs for some of my clients that have Keywordmax (the best way for a SMB company to match conversions to traffic that i’ve found so far) does not match this chart - I suspect I’d need a client with a large volume of conversions and be able to look at 6 months to 1 year of time.

I will use this chart however, to go back and look at my raw data for both clients and see if there is a level of correspondance betwwen BIGresearch’s latest Simultaneous Media Study (SIMM) of more than 15,000 respondents (December 2005) (above chart) and what my clients see.