eBay Removes Its Ads from Google

What’s going on between eBay and Google? Some reports say it’s a feud between the two online corporations, while others claim it is merely a testing mechanism for eBay to see how much of their traffic is actually being driven by their ads on Google.

eBay reportedly removed all their ads from the search engine giant and will keep them off for the next week, which could cause some interesting backlash. According to Schaeffer’s Research, eBay is currently one of Google’s biggest advertisers, generating 1% to 2% of Google’s annual revenue and spending tens of millions of dollars a year on keyword ads that generate links to eBay listings when Google users type in specific search terms.

If the feud is the true reason behind the removal of the ads, then it will be interesting to see how this affects their relationship, Google’s response and eBay’s sales. If this is merely a test to see how much traffic Google actually generates for eBay, this could be an interesting lesson for online marketers to see how effective the search engines are for their online campaigns.