Is Yahoo SearchScan Killing Your Traffic?
| Posted by: Jennifer Gregory |
Yahoo has added SearchScan to their search results. SearchScan was created by McAfee to determine unsafe websites that either carry a virus, have downloads that contain spyware, or that share your email addresses with third parties.
Here’s what Yahoo search results look like with the new SearchScan:
Look what Searchscan does to Yahoo’s #1 organic listing for the word “wallpaper”. Who’s really going to click on that listing now? Maybe some, but it leaves people wondering why Yahoo would even have a ‘potentially harmful website’ as the #1 result for any keyword.
At second glance, you might think that Search Scan warnings showing up on organic listings might boost the click-through rate of the paid search results. But, look at the top warning:
“2 potentially harmful websites are marked on this page”
And then the top paid search results are listed directly below the warning. You know searchers will attribute some of the ‘warning’ to those results, just based on proximity!
I understand that most search results won’t have a Search Scan warning in them, but for those topics that involve anything software or shareware related, Yahoo is shooting itself in the foot. If you are using Yahoo’s PPC program or depend on Yahoo traffic, you may want to check to see if your listing is contaminated with a bid red warning sign from SearchScan.
If so, you can rollover the warning and get this popup:
You can click on “Site owner support”, which will take you to a form asking for reconsideration from McAfee. You can also see the “More Details” link, which takes you to a page created by McAfee and McAfee users. These site details tell you all sorts of interesting information including how many emails they send out on average, # of users on the site, download tests, other website affiliations, third party cookies, how many popups there are, and user reviews.
Sample Wallpapers.com analysis
It should also be noted that McAfee has agreed to promote the Yahoo search engine to its users, which might help explain Yahoo’s willingness to add SearchScan to its results.
