April 22, 2005

It's always good to remember with these type of figures that trends typically don't emerge until several months have gone by. Case in point was all the hoopla last month, when MSN had a small 1.4 share rise from 12.8 percent in January to 14.2 percent in February.

A one month shift is nothing. You want to see a pattern grow over three, four or more months before shouting trend. Nevertheless, there was quite a bit of speculation on that one month change because of all the ad spending that MSN is now doing.

Shouldn't the service's big ad campaign have spiked it even higher? Perhaps. But perhaps the ad campaign did nothing at all, with interest actually spiked because of general press reports about MSN.

In whatever case, MSN has dipped down to 13.6 percent, with Google seeming to benefit from that loss. Panic time? Ads not working? Best to give it a few more months and wonder about other factors, before drawing too many heavy conclusions.

Here are some articles about the MSN rise from last month, with ample quotes and observations from MSN on how it plans to continue:

• MSN Gains Search Market Share from AdWeek, with the tone of how the publicity campaign seemed to have stolen traffic from Google.
   
• MSN vs. Google: Major marketing effort not yet turning tide from the San Jose Business Journal, with ample MSN quotes on why they aren't disappointed that the rise wasn't bigger.
   
• Microsoft Searches for a Way to Catch Up from Business 2.0, mostly positive but noting, "Of course, one month doesn't make a trend."