After temporarily removing all its paid search advertising from the search engine, eBay has returned to advertising via Google, though it has reduced its spend from previous levels.
The two firms had fallen out after Google had scheduled a Google Checkout party on the fringes of eBay’s own event in Boston last week. This was seen as a provocative move by eBay, as Google has been keen to promote its PayPal rival to eBay sellers.
In the end, Google cancelled the party, but eBay then removed all its US search advertising from Google. The company claimed it was a pre planned experiment to look at its search ad options.
The online auction giant is reckoned to be one of the largest users of Google AdWords, with some estimates putting eBay’s expenditure at up to $26m per month, which equates to $312m annually.
According to Hitwise US, Google is the main source of traffic for eBay, and upstream traffic for eBay from Google did drop when the auction site pulled its ads. However, traffic to eBay was not seriously impacted.
The site is now returning to AdWords, but will scale down its reliance on the search engine, using Google’s rivals Ask.com, Yahoo and MSN more than previously.
Spokesperson Hani Durzy announced that eBay would resume with ‘more limited’ advert
