Shopping search engine DealTime has released a ROI Tracker, a free tool for advertisers to track their conversion and sales metrics. The ROI Tracker gives three metrics: conversion-to-click ratios, conversion-to-sales ratios, and costs of sales (Internet News talks about it today).
We can really say that search engine technology providers are really working hard to make people talk about them. There's still a big business out there to be exploited. Search technology is particulary important to e-commerce web sites, and I believe it's interesting to notice how search function efficiency is often underestimated by them or, at least, not considered as important as it should be.
Adage talked also about the huge search engine business a couple of days ago. The focus in this case was on search engines and advertising, saying that Sponsored Internet search engine ads spurred more than $200 million in online travel sales and more than 2 million financial services application submission according to new research by the IAB.