Looking at paid clicks, or referrals, as a % of total search queries, we see a fairly familiar picture.

However, not all queries are created equal. As Jeremy Crane pointed out many queries do not lead to referral. Many of the unfulfilled queries are probably due to searchers not finding what they’re looking for. Many queries are also informational and can be answered right there on the SERP.

As you can see, Google answers the query on the top of the SERP with a handy conversion calculator, while Yahoo! doesn’t. Instead, Yahoo! offers paid results from Calibex and BizRate.

For users, it’s great to get the desired information right there on the SERP, without having to click-through to another page. For search engines, it’s a missed opportunity to monetize a search.

Thus a more appropriate online metric for measuring search monetization might be paid referrals as a % total referrals.

MSN Cashback successfully attracting visitors

This week MSN announced the launch of SearchPerks!, a new promotion that rewards visitors that use Live Search with tickets redeemable for various prizes. The latest endeavor is separate from the Live Search Cashback rebate program launched a few months ago, but certainly uses a similar tactic (pay for search) to reach the same goal (drive search activity) on MSN’s search properties (including both MSN Search & Windows Live Search). So far the question has been are people using Cashback? Is it a successful promotion - particularly with the launch of another?

Who is visiting MSN Cashback? For the 4 weeks ending Sept. 27, 2008, the visitors to MSN Cashback were skewed slightly more female and represented 55% of traffic. Nearly half of the visitors were between the ages of 25 to 44: 22% were aged 25 to 34 and 27% aged 35 to 44. The majority of the visitors have a HH income of under $100k.