Report: Bing Searchers Still More Click-Happy Than Google Searchers When It Comes To Ads

Are people who arrive at a Website through an organic search on Bing more click-happy than those who come from Google? Back in July, we reported some numbers from search-advertising network Chitika which showed that people from Bing clicked on ads about 50 percent more than people from Google. Chitika just ran the numbers again, and the clickthrough rate (CTR) from Bing searchers is now about 75 percent higher.

The actual CTR for Bing is 1.74 percent versus 0.98 percent for Google, compared to a 1.50 percent CTR in the summer.  Google’s CTR is almost the same.  Chitika is basing these numbers on 134 million ad impressions across 80,000 sites, so it is a snapshot.  It is measuring the proensity for people to click on an ad at asite after arriving there from a search engine via an organic search (i.e., not a paid search ad).

While Bing’s associated CTR went up, it’s actual share of search traffic went down to 5.75 percent from 8 percent last time.  So the increase in the CTR could be skewed by its relatively small market share.  Ask and AOL, which both represent even smaller shares of traffic to Chitika’s network, also have higher CTRs than even Bing, with AOL searchers clicking on ads at a 2.5 percent rate.

Is a group’s propensity to click on ads inversely related to its tech savvyness?  You be the judge.

Search Engine Ad Clicks Impressions Ad CTR % of Search CTR Compared to Google
AOL 42,597 1,706,858 2.50% 1.27% 253.56%
Ask 34,437 1,958,490 1.76% 1.45% 178.65%
Bing 134,536 7,741,724 1.74% 5.75% 176.57%
Google 1,115,452 113,332,938 0.98% 84.13% 100.00%
Yahoo! 136,506 9,972,035 1.37% 7.40% 139.08%
Total Search 1,463,528 134,712,045 1.09%