CYBERSPACE – Out of the top 4 search engines examined in January, Web analysis firm WebSideStory Inc. reports that AOL Search has the best conversion rate for business-to-consumer e-commerce sites.According to WebSideStory, AOL’s conversion rate was 6.17%, followed by Microsoft’s MSN at 6.03%, Yahoo at 4.07% and Google at 3.83%. Each of the major engines outperformed the general average for all search engines, which was 1.97% – down from 2.3% for the last quarter of 2005.

Ali Benham, senior digital marketing consultant for WebSideStory, told InternetWeek one reason for the different conversion rates was the different demographics for the user base of each engine.

“With portals rich in content and services, AOL, MSN and Yahoo may tend to appeal toward a more buyer-friendly demographic,” Behnam said. “Google, meanwhile, may appeal to more browsers – those with less of an intent to buy.”

WebSideStory analysts also noted that Google is more focused on search results, and less focused that its competitors on providing content, products and entertainment directly to users from its portal.

Google remains the clear leader in search share, and (not coincidentally) advertising revenue. According to the Nielsen NetRatings, Google gets 46.3% of searches, Yahoo 23.4%, MSN 11.4% and AOL 6.9%.