Vancouver Yahoo Search Day – SOHO Conference

It’s important for businesses to start taking advantage of internet marketing and Yahoo! did a great job of stressing this at Yahoo’s Search Day in Vancouver.

It was interesting to see some of the statistics at Yahoo’s Search Day. Three out of four Canadians are now connected to the internet with 85 million searches happening on a daily basis. Many Canadian businesses are not tapping into this market and are missing out on producing extra revenue. Even more interesting was the statistic from Yahoo’s presentation (based on research – I think they used JC Penny as one of their examples) that claimed for every $1 spent online the mortar and brick businesses saw additional $6 revenue in store, I thought this 1 to 6 ratio was very impressive and should have been an eye opener to those at the conference not yet fully implementing internet marketing into their business structure.

Bill Barnes Enquiro Search Solutions Co Founder and Executive Vice President went over some interesting material on how people click in the search results and your website. Though most of it was fairly what I expected with the top 3 results getting the most followed up by the top right result. Interestingly enough the pattern was broken (From highest to lowest) when the next most clicked spot was at the fold (The part of the search results where you need to scroll to see more). TIP — Those using positioning preference in google adwords may want to try ranking for the spot on the fold for cheaper clicks with high CTR’s.

Overall the day was a success and I got to meet and speak to some great people. All the speakers did an amazing job and kept the whole digital conference entertaining and engaging. During lunch I got to briefly speak to Martin Byrne Yahoo’s Search Marketing Director. I asked him if Yahoo was planning to release a google adwords editor equivalent tool for Yahoo Panama (MSN just launched theirs – Alpha Stage) and though he didn’t say if they were or weren’t he did let me know that Yahoo Panama is going to get a brand new UI and update in about Q3 of this year.