Pay-per-click ads from eBay are back on Google search results pages after an absence of more than a week. But the online auction site says it is considering making a “significant” reduction in the ads it runs on Google.
EBay spokesman Hani Durzy told the Associated Press that turning off the Google campaigns for 10 days and boosting spending on competing search networks Yahoo!, MSN Search and Ask.com had not had a large impact on the company’s traffic. Durzi said visits to eBay were up compared to the same period in 2006. He did not specify what effect the Google blackout may have had on eBay sales.
“Overall, the takeaway for us was that we weren’t as dependent on [Google] AdWords as some out there may have thought,” he said.
To hear eBay tell it, the removal of its ubiquitous “Looking for…?” text ads from Google searches was part of a periodic experiment to test the performance of its various online outlets and had been in the works for months before the ads disappeared.
Nevertheless, the move looked like retaliation for Google’s attempts to woo eBay sellers attending a convention in Boston on June 14 with a party to promote Google Checkout, the company’s automated payment system and a potential rival to eBay-owned PayPal. EBay does not let its sellers use Checkout to process transactions.
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