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December 27, 2007

A Look at the Top Searches of 2007

OK, so we all know what people are really searching for most of the time. But if you filter out the perennial favorites (most of which are NSFW), then you can have a look at the most popular, up-and-coming search terms of 2007. In case you missed these earlier, here are the lists of top queries from various search engines:

AOL breaks down its "Hot Searches" by categories, including movies, bands, and accidental celebrities

Ask.com shows that its search volume can predict World Series winners...now will the Cowboys beat the Patriots and prove that true for the NFL as well? If Ask users are unusually prescience extends to presidential candidates, it looks like Barack Obama has Hillary Clinton beat.

Google brings us its year-end zeitgeist, telling us that the iPhone, Webkinz, TMZ and Transformers were the fastest-rising search terms of the year in the U.S.

Lycos tells us that poker, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton topped the search charts this year.

Yahoo's Top Trends in Search in 2007 reveal that Saddam Hussein, Britney Spears, and Harry Potter were among the most searched-for names this year.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 5:19 AM | Permalink

December 18, 2006

Keyword Research Best Practices

Barry pointed out a great response to thread at Search Engine Watch forums by Paid Search Guru Ian McAnerin. A member had asked Forum visitors which industries they "would not touch with a 10 foot SEO pole?"

Ian answers led to some additional excellent discussion at SEW and a couple of gems in the SER comments.

Keyword research is a topic that is considered to be very basic by many in the SEO and Paid Search fields. This is likely due to the fact that it has been one of the few constants since the early days of SEO, when tools began to appear that were geared towards finding the right keywords. Since, many writing about the subject have indicated the same core needs: relevancy and popularity, including Danny from way back when, Kevin Lee, Shari Thurow, and most recently Christine Churchill.

Ian's post at Search Engine Watch makes three main points: First that some industries may be too difficult to venture into without specialized experience; secondly, you may not want to venture into some industries due to business concerns (he cites Realtors as being especially “difficult” when it comes to payment or buying in to the value); and lastly that your personal belief set may be in conflict with the particular industry, such as Hate or Porn sites, for example.

Ian comment raised some good follow up questions, and he defends his opinion that one should “cut their teeth” by targeting more localized terms. The whole topic leads well to a discussion of the core competency of keyword research. When venturing into a new space, it is likely that many SEO’s are at a slight disadvantage due to being unfamiliar with terms. When deciding on whether to accept a project, it actually takes a fair amount of diligence on the part of any SEO; otherwise they may be simply saying “sure we’ll get you ranked.” This could be an alarm signal.

Using geo-modified keywords as the target can also prove to be difficult if not properly done. In some cases, there may be a majority of searchers using the city or town before the more general term (i.e.: Timbuktu hotel) while in others, people may use it more often after the term. The fact is that without excellent and trusted keyword research, only trial and error will lead to the required log files that report the actual activity. This trial and error period can be greatly eased by having an unlimited paid search budget to run all keywords on broad match across all engines for at least 2 or three months. Unfortunately not everyone has the budget to do that. However, running these types of campaigns on a local basis may be somewhat helpful.

One comment that was very insightful at the SER blog was that “generally the most competitive websites have the highest cost in PPC advertising. Find the biggest spenders and you have the stiffest competition.” Although this is a generalization, it holds fairly true. When making a decision as to whether to venture into an industry for SEO, a quick check of the results pages for Paid Search listings can save a good amount of time for small SEO/SEM shops.

Posted by Chris Boggs at 9:09 AM | Permalink

December 10, 2006

November Search Trend Data Released by Compete.com

Compete.com, a new search popularity tool bar and measurement service, similar to Alexa, released their data for November 2006, indicating a bounce back in traffic for Google after a small slide, and a decrease for Yahoo, who had experienced a bit of growth during October.

Interesting to note is Ask.com's growth over last year's traffic numbers, perhaps as a result of offline advertising to support the rebranding efforts.

Other key data released by Compete.com for November included top search term traffic for proper names, which contained the usual suspects of celebrity names & gossip fodder. Read more about how Compete gathers search popularity data in the corresponding blog post.

Greg Sterling first covered the launch of Compete.com, and other search gurus such as John Battelle are looking for the service to provide better data than Alexa.

Posted by Elisabeth Osmeloski at 2:36 PM | Permalink

November 29, 2006

Alexa Ain't So Bad, Says Site Search Comparison

Alexa has come under plenty of fire recently as not being accurate (old hands have known better for years), as more and more people are using it to "prove" how hot their sites are. Sean Ryan at SLI Systems says lay off the Alexa bashing! SLI provides search services for a variety of web sites. Sean plotted the amount of searches he sees against the relative Alexa traffic rankings of some sites and found there was a correspondence. If you were a high traffic Alexa site, you also had a lot of site searches. Interesting, but I'm afraid it won't make a believer out of me.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:06 AM | Permalink

November 22, 2006

Search Popularity Stats, Sliced & Diced

Catch up time on search engine popularity stats. comScore and NetRatings put out October 2006 figures this week, plus Hitwise released those earlier this month. Google's still tops, Yahoo still strong, Microsoft is still dropping and Ask surpasses AOL's search share, according to comScore. Below, the trend from all of them over the past year, plus my long-promised compare-and-contrast charts.

First, let's do a compare-and-contrast table with the basic figures from each service. These show the estimated share of the number of searches that happened in the United States in October 2006.

Month

comScore

NetRatings

Hitwise

Google

45.4%

49.6%

60.9%

Yahoo

28.2%

23.9%

22.3%

Microsoft

11.7%

8.8%

10.6%

Ask

5.8%

2.8%

4.3%

AOL

5.4%

6.2%

0.5%

Others

3.5%

8.7%

1.2%

Across the board, all the services put Google in the lead, Yahoo second and Microsoft's Windows Live third (sorry, I still say MSN on the chart). Two of the services put Ask over AOL in the fourth place spot. More analysis on all this in the service trend charts, below.

Here's comScore figures over the past year:

Remember that Google drop back in July, when lots of people started freaking out about the demise of the Big G. I warned not to focus on month-to-month changes. Since then, Google's recovered according to comScore and keeps going.

Yahoo's seen declines since July, but not enough to send up the alarm bells. They are well within the usual ranges that I've discussed are the things to watch. That range is the 25 to 30 percent slice of the chart.

In contrast, Microsoft continues on its long, steady drop in popularity. It will especially be interesting to see the figures in the next few months, as IE7 rolls out and potentially gives Microsoft Live Search a bump. Or not. My Searching Via Internet Explorer 7 & The Battle To Be The Default Search Engine article talks more about the changes in IE7 that might help drive traffic.

Unnoticed, as far as I can tell, is the fact that in September, Ask overtook AOL for the fourth slot in the search engine share battle. That's a big deal. In fact, according to comScore, AOL is on track to plunge out of the 5 to 10 percent band it has occupied over the past year. Ask is hanging in there.

Of course, the traffic for Ask isn't just for Ask.com. It's for the combination of sites that Ask owns or controls, including places like Excite, iWon, MyWay.com and My Web Search. Still, as a network, Ask remains controlling a significant chunk of the search space.

That's what comScore says. Now let's see how it looks at NetRatings:

Basically, NetRatings shows status quo. Google and Yahoo keep ticking along at the same levels. So does Ask. AOL hangs in roughly the same general range. It's Microsoft Windows Live (MSN on the chart) that catches my eye most with consistent decline.

Also note that with NetRatings, AOL is well above Ask. That's because NetRatings is only reporting the share for Ask.com. If other Ask-owned properties were combined, then the Ask figure would be higher. Much of that traffic instead flows into the "Other" line.

Next to Hitwise:

Hitwise doesn't go back as far as NetRatings and comScore, so it's harder to feel confident about trends. But the trends are similar to comScore, a slight Google rise, Yahoo holding steady, Ask above AOL and that decline of MSN.

Now back to what I promised ages ago, the old-style comparison charts I used to do. Here are all three services together, showing share score for October 2006:

Now let me explain what I think is unique in charting the figures this way. Usually, you'd see a comparison using a bar chart. Shares for Google from all three services would be shown as three bars next to each other, then the same for Yahoo and so on.

I like doing these as line charts, because it makes the gaps more noticeable and gives you a trend as well.

For example, you can see how all the services rate Google tops, though the amount Google is above the others may vary. Conclusion? While Google's exact popularity is uncertain, it's clearly more popular than anyone else, the services agree.

Notice that with Yahoo, they all agree it is in second place and the general range of popularity is closer (roughly between 25 to 30 percent). For MSN (Windows Live), the all come together. When you hit AOL, Hitwise is the big player that's way off the mark from the other two. I've covered this before, that I don't think Hitwise is getting accurate information about AOL that causes this. But seeing the two big skews -- that Hitwise puts Google so high above the others and AOL so low -- makes me think that if AOL was counted correctly, then Hitwise would be reflecting the same general trend as the others.

Now let's trend each of the major search engines using figures from all three services. Here's Google:

Fair to say, Google's pretty much continuing to grow, despite the hiccups you might see from time-to-time on various services.

Here's Yahoo:

Generally, I think it's fair to say that Yahoo had a spike in popularity earlier this year but has settled down more to its usual levels. That's not bad. It has healthy, long-term traffic. What remains to be seen is if it can grow that traffic more in the long term.

Here's Microsoft:

Slice it how you want, no one is reporting a pretty picture for Microsoft. Unlike Yahoo, they haven't held share. It's drop, drop, drop.

Here's AOL, which similar to Microsoft, shows drops:

I'm sorry I don't have the similar chart for Ask. I'll try to add it later, but I shut my spreadsheet (argh) before saving my comparison numbers, so I have some more copy and pasting to do to get that chart back.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:19 AM | Permalink

November 21, 2006

Google Beats Microsoft, Yahoo As College Grad Choice

Online Recruitment reports on a CollegeGrad.com poll showing Google is the most desired place for technology students to work for. The poll asked 1,600 respondents in October "Who would you rather work for?" The results:

Google - 49%
Microsoft - 29%
Yahoo - 12%
IBM - 10%

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:30 AM | Permalink

October 31, 2006

SnapShot: A Better Version Of Alexa

Compete, Inc. is a B2B firm that conducts consumer-oriented research for large clients. Now the company has released SnapShot, a free tool that anyone can use. It operates like Alexa or Google Trends to display relative traffic, as well as several other metrics such as page views and time on site. Here's an example.

According to Compete, there's a qualitative and quantitative difference between this tool and Google Trends or Alexa, because it leverages their entire 2 million person panel. See Compete's Alexa comparison.

There are a few limitations: it's U.S. audience only, sites with fewer than 10,000 monthly uniques are excluded and you can only compare three sites side by side. But out of the gate it's a much better and more accurate tool than Alexa.

Posted by Greg Sterling at 12:14 PM | Permalink

October 24, 2006

Google Gains Traction In Japan

InfoWorld reports that Google has "17.4 million users in September, up from 12.1 million in the same period a year earlier." This gives Google the 10th spot in the Japan's web property ranking. Google the 10th spot in the Japan's web property ranking. The NetRatings study shows Yahoo Japan holding 23.6 million visits during the month. Google has the 3rd most page views of the top 10, with 2 billion page views for the month.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:26 AM | Permalink

October 18, 2006

Why Don't External Site Popularity Estimates Add Up?

A twofer today on whether you can trust the web metrics that are reported out there, one an article from BusinessWeek while the other is a big study from SEOmoz based on data gathered from a variety of search blogs. More details below, with lots of comments from me along the way.

Web Numbers: What's Real? from BusinessWeek looks at how sites want to prove they're popular but their own internal metrics might not stand-up to external ones -- nor do external services themselves agree.

I love the irony here. I wrote about how in August, BusinessWeek itself declared Digg to be the 24th most popular site in the US based on Alexa data that many marketers are highly suspicious of. Now I've got BusinessWeek telling me:

The dirty little secret of Silicon Valley is that no one knows exactly who is going where on the Web.

Pity that secret wasn't outed before a BusinessWeek cover story leveraging on of those stats so highly. In fact, BusinessWeek now writes:

Web outfits seem to agree that Alexa is flawed, but they continue to rely on it because the data are so addictive. Since Alexa's numbers are free and available online, they can easily be plugged into a PowerPoint presentation or onto a blog, providing a quick-and-dirty way to get a competitive snapshot. Blogs cite Alexa as gospel, and its graphs are part of nearly every startup's pitch to investors.

Apparently, the stats were just gospel for bloggers. BusinessWeek took it as gospel itself.

Meanwhile, the story leaves me cold when it says:

No wonder that a host of newer services, such as Alexa and Hitwise, are highlighting the weaknesses of the older traffic-measuring companies and are muscling onto the scene with alternatives.

Yes, Alexa's only been offering site traffic estimates since at least 1999, so let's call it a newer service. Sorry for the rant, BusinessWeek, but you're not redeeming yourself well with this.

Still, it's a nice update to what's actually an old, old problem, that internal metrics might not agree with external estimates. The search engines long ago would yap that comScore or NetRatings said they weren't as popular as internally they believed. Naturally, they stay quiet if those figures perhaps are off in their favor. My past series on stats look at this more:

Another good point in the article is how it highlights that things like AJAX and widgets might not get counted in traffic figures. Counting popularity on the web has never been easy, and it's just getting more complicated.

Meanwhile, over at SEOmoz, Rand Fishkin's finished a project where he's assembled internal metrics from various search-related blogs and compares them to some external metrics. Website Analytics vs. Competitive Intelligence Metrics is well worth checking out, if only to see how different sites stack up against each other, based on self-reported figures.

Unfortunately, the big visitor table isn't sorted by any particular order. It's mainly showing sites with the most visits in 2006, but there are a few glitches that throw it off. Still, lots of stats to love there.

There's another table that lists metrics from Alexa, Compete, Technorati and other sources for each of the sites. This is even harder to digest. The table seems sorted in order of who was popular based on the internal metrics. It would have been better to sort it by one of the external metrics (say Alexa) and then let you see the rank order compared to the internal metrics.

Lots of slack to Rand, however -- he had his hands full just getting this assembled and still needs time to get his Digg submission crew going to gain some page views for it. Look, Rand's blog gets most of its traffic from Digg -- he's a master. Yep, but hey Rand -- who has the highest percentage of traffic from search engines? That would be my Daggle blog -- eat my dust, Rand! Then again, that might also suggest an lack of other online marketing activities for Daggle -- and that would be right. It's just my play area :)

Back to the internal versus external comparison. With the tables hard to digest, I went straight to the summary:

From our estimates, the top 5 best predictors of traffic, in order, are:

Technorati Rank
Yahoo! Link Count
Technorati Link Count
SEOmoz's Page Strength Score
Alexa Rank

However, none of these are nearly accurate enough to use, even in combination, to help predict a site's level of traffic or its relative popularity, even in a small niche with similar competitors. Unfortunately, it appears that the external metrics available for competitive intelligence on the web today simply do not provide a significant source of value....

Incidentally, I did log in to Hitwise to check their estimations and although I can't publish them (as Hitwise is a paid service and doing so would violate terms of service), I can say that the numbers issued from the competitive intelligence tool were no better than Alexa's in predicting relative popularity or traffic estimation.

The sad conclusion is that right now, no publicly available competitive analysis tool we're aware of provides solid value. Let's hope the next few years provide better data. Please leave comments, questions or feedback in this blog post on the topic.

Go get your Digg traffic for this, Rand -- it's well deserved.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:16 AM | Permalink

October 6, 2006

Hitwise: 'Social Local Search' Growing Fast

Hitwise's LeeAnn Prescott, who presented at SES Local, has posted some of the data she showed at the conference. In this particular example, what she compared was traffic to traditional yellow pages sites vs. directory sites that incorporated user-generated content:

"[G]rowth over the past year to the yellow pages custom category has been relatively flat, while the market share of visits to the custom category containing Yahoo! Local, Yelp, Judy's Book and Insider Pages has grown by 44% when comparing August 2005 to August 2006. While standard yellow pages sites are receiving significantly more traffic in terms of volume, these newer directory services, with maps, reviews, and community features are quickly catching up."

Posted by Greg Sterling at 10:59 AM | Permalink

October 5, 2006

Search Competition; Why Can't Others Catch Up To Google?

BusinessWeek.com has a good article on search competition, explaining how Google's continued growth amongst all the competition is practically unaffected. In short, the article goes over new features, refinements, and user interfaces and explains that it is mostly about the trust the searchers have for the Google brand to provide the best results. Take a look at Danny's recent rant, he goes into this more and also check out Danny's post on Daggle.com named Why Search Sucks & You Won't Fix It The Way You Think. Want a view from a Google employee on the article, read Matt Cutts take on it, where he kinda of knocks Ask.com's topic communities link analysis method, saying it is "hard to explain" to people.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:20 AM | Permalink

September 18, 2006

Baidu Holds 62% Share In China

LinuxWorld reports that Baidu, the Chinese search engine, has 62.1 percent share based on a China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC) report. That is up 10 points from 52 percent in 2005. In terms of brand recognition in China, 86.5 percent identifying with the name "Baidu," where only 64 percent identifying with the name "Google" in China. The study does state that 76.3 percent use more than one search engine regularly. The article everyone is buzzing about is a NY Times article named The Rise of Baidu (That’s Chinese for Google), it really does make for a good read.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:53 AM | Permalink

September 13, 2006

Hitwise Data Center Offers Search Terms & Top Search Engines For Various Countries

New from Hitwise is the Hitwise Data Center, sharing details on web surfing behavior. There are different data centers for various countries, and for search marketers, two key reports tell you top terms and top search engines.

Hitwise Data Center US, for example, shows you the top search engines by volume of searches here and top search terms here. From the Data Center home page, you can also use the drop-down box to get top terms by particular categories, such as these for dating.

Beyond the US, there's also:

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 2:49 PM | Permalink

September 6, 2006

Classifieds A Big Gainer In Local Landscape

comScore is reporting that the classifieds category is gaining very fast with 47% annual traffic growth. Classifieds sites, as defined by comScore, collectively racked up 37.4 million monthly uniques in July. That's 22% penetration of the total U.S. online population. As one might predict the category leader is Craigslist, which had 13.8 million users and experienced 99% growth vs. the previous year. Only two sites grew faster than Craigslist on a percentage basis: LiveDeal (104%) and Oodle (463%).

Posted by Greg Sterling at 4:38 AM | Permalink

August 31, 2006

Flickr #1 Photography Site In UK

Hitwise is reporting that Flickr is the #1 photography site in the UK. This isn't really a surprise at all - what's more suprising is that it's taken a while to get there, and how it's got there.

Flickr's UK market share has increased 39%, Photobucket's share decreased by 17% and Webshot's remained flat. This is apparently due good SEO and searches for soft porn using the brand name and various terms you can work out for yourself.

In some respects this is worthy of nothing more than a wry smile and shrug of the shoulders. Unfortunately however, this may be seen in some circles as a justification for the calls for libraries to limit their (innocent) involvement with Flickr.

As reported by Michael Stephens in ALA TechSource back in July various emails have been flying around making rather silly claims. While these emails seem to have been centered on American libraries it will be interesting to see if the same thing happens in the UK. I rather doubt that it will, but it's worth watching out for. So, a slightly double edged sword for Flickr in Britain.

Posted by Phil Bradley at 12:43 PM | Permalink

August 23, 2006

Hitwise: Google & Yahoo Make Tiny Gains In July 2006

Today I look at figures from Hitwise, as part of my series on search engine rating figures that have recently been released and how to analyze them. For those just tuning in, on Monday, I covered comScore stats showing a Google decline in July 2006. On Tuesday, I talked about NetRatings also showing a decline, but a smaller one than comScore. The main point in both of those articles was to stress the need to look at data over a longer period of time than month-to-month and to examine figures from multiple services.

Unlike comScore and NetRatings, Hitwise has only been publicly releasing "share of search" figures since March 2006. Share of search means that you look at all the searches that happen on the web, in a particular country, within a particular vertical space or whatever. Then you calculate what percentage of those shares each search engine handles.

Having share of search figures is a real relief compared to the bad old days of counting unique visitors or visits or page views from across an entire site. This past article explains more about that.

Now Hitwise is doing what comScore and NetRatings have been doing. However, where the underlying data comes from is different. The other companies watch what surfers are doing by having a group that they monitor through meters, systems on your computer to seeing where you go and what you do. Hitwise instead analyzes data from ISPs that it partners with. It sees what groups of people are doing through the ISP data it obtains.

While the exact data gathering method varies, the idea is generally the same. All three companies are monitoring groups of real surfers, to make estimates about what the entire audience of web surfers are doing.

What's Hitwise got to say about search activity last month? Here's the share of searches in the United States that each search engine is estimated to have handled:

Search Engine Domain

6/06

7/06

Change

Google www.google.com

59.8%

60.2%

0.5%

Yahoo search.yahoo.com

22.3%

22.5%

0.3%

MSN search.msn.com

12.1%

11.8%

-0.3%

Ask www.ask.com

3.6%

3.3%

-0.3%

AOL search.aol.com

1.05%

1.01%

-0.04%

For The 4 Week Period Ending:

7/1/06

7/29/06

My freshly updated page, Hitwise Search Engine Ratings, gives you stats going further back in time, along with more explanations about what the domains might or might not include. There may be plenty of searches that aren't being counted, something I'm checking with Hitwise about.

I've warned not to worry about month-to-month changes, yet I've shown them in the chart above in order to talk more about reasons why you might not fret so much. As I've covered, two ratings services have said Google dropped in July in differing amounts. Now here's a third saying it grew. Decision? You might split the difference and assume the truth is somewhere in between. It might not be comScore's one point plunge. It might not be Hitwise's half-point rise. It might be closer this time to what NetRatings was showing, a very slight decline or perhaps no gain.

Let's pull the trend chart from my Hitwise page, then we'll talk month-to-month stuff more:

In my article yesterday, I talked about being worried mainly if I saw a particular search engine plunge through particular "bands" on a chart, say if MSN were to break out of the 10 to 15 percent band. From the Hitwise chart, things are pretty much status quo across the board.

Look at Yahoo back in May. It hit 22.0 percent, a decline from 22.2 percent in April 2006 and 22.3 percent the month before in March. Conclusion? Ring the alarm bells! But then it climbed the next two months. Now it's at the highest point in five months. But if you consider the entire period, it pretty much hasn't changed. Anyone looking at only month-to-month comparisons is probably ringing alarm bells needlessly or lighting cigars with $100 bills that they ought to be banking.

Google was looking to be a band buster, of course. It popped into the 60 to 65 percent range. Party time at the Plex? Early data I mentioned yesterday from Hitwise suggests that August 2006 will see Google back in the 55 to 60 percent band. If so, that's again more a status quo event than a trend to me, unless you're happy with status quo being a trend, and I am.

MSN's generally seeing drops from Hitwise, something the other services are also reflecting. On the back of all three of them, this is a case where the alarm bells feel far more warranted. It's mostly within its regular band, but it does seem likely it's going to plunge into a new, lower level.

It's also interesting that AOL is a far, far lower share than the other services. Hitwise gives it a 1 percent share for July 2006. NetRatings gives it a 11.8 percent share, while comScore a 5.9 percent share.

The most likely reason that Hitwise is so low is that it cannot see the searches that AOL users are doing, if they access AOL Search from within AOL, using AOLs own software and access lines. That's going to have an impact. As a result, it's difficult to trust the Hitwise figures much in the case of AOL -- though in my next part, I'll still explain how to tap into the rating services to measure a search engine's health, even if they all seem to disagree.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:50 AM | Permalink

August 22, 2006

NetRatings: Tiny Google Decline, But Not The First Time & Yahoo Growth

Yesterday I looked at the latest figures out of comScore that showed Google seeing its first drop in search share for nearly a year. My review of rating service figures continues today with NetRatings. They also show a Google drop, but far less than the comScore figures.

We'll get to the NetRatings figures in a moment, but first a look back at comScore. I said I had some follow-up questions for them. comScore kindly responded, and you'll find answers postscripted here.

I poked a bit at comScore for spinning its figures in press releases to gain attention. But exactly as Frank Barnako notes, all the ratings services do it. Heck, newspapers do it, and we do it ourselves on occasion, look for an angle that will attract attention to a story.

The main thing I'm trying to encourage with any of the figures you review -- or really anything you read -- is to use that old "critical thinking" stuff that my high school teachers used to pound into my head. Question everything and wonder about what's not being said or examined. Amr Awadallah gives an example of this from earlier in the year.

As another example, we have the situation now, where Google saw a July 2006 decline in marketshare as reported by comScore. Beginning of the end, or perhaps something you'd expect? As I noted, month-to-month or month-to-year-ago figures might not be enough to tell the story. As it turns out from the long-term comScore chart I showed earlier, Google's had declines before. That's not in the press release that went out, but comScore did highlight it in the follow-up they sent me:

We agree with your assessment that a single-month decline does not constitute a trend. In fact, comScore also observed a similar seasonal decline for Google during the same period last year. Fewer work days, more vacations, and reliance on academia could all contribute to Google’s core user group showing lower online activity and conducting fewer searches during this time period. Bottom line – Google could be more impacted by seasonality than other engines

Now let's head into NetRatings. I was going to do Hitwise today, but ever so coincidentally, NetRatings put out its latest search share figures a few hours after comScore released theirs. Funny how that happens, eh?

The release isn't online yet, but you can watch for it via the NetRatings press page here. There was no particular spin to it, just a simple headline of:

Nielsen//NetRatings Announces July U.S. Search Share Rankings

FYI, NetRatings didn't play down an angle in the wake of my comScore article. Go through the archives, and you'll see that this is how releases of search share have been put out by NetRatings since May, all low key. Of course, go back a bit further and then you get into releases that also pitch angles.

How about those figures? Here they are, all searches within the United States:

July 2006

Searches (Millions)

Searches Per Day (Millions)

Google

49.2%

2,776

92.5

Yahoo

23.8%

1,346

44.9

MSN

9.6%

542

18.1

AOL

6.3%

355

11.8

Ask

2.6%

149

5.0

My Way

2.3%

129

4.3

EarthLink

0.6%

1.1

iWon

0.6%

1.0

Netscape

0.5%

1.0

Dogpile

0.4%

0.8

Others

4.1%

233

7.8

Total

100.0%

5,646

188.2

Now let's look at some trends. Pulling the chart from my now updated Nielsen NetRatings Search Engine Ratings page, we get this

You can see the tiniest of drops for Google from June to July. For Yahoo, a marked rise. MSN continues that slow, slow drop. Now for some drill downs.

One of the key things I said yesterday about dealing with search share figures is to watch patterns over a long period of time and also look at what's happening with different services. If you only watched comScore, Google had nearly a year of rises until July's fall. Seeing a drop and only knowing about comScore figures might be alarming.

In contrast, the chart above shows that Google's gone through several declines more recently, at least according to NetRatings. In April 2006, it had a peak of 49.8 percent of the search share in the US. The next month in May it dropped nearly a full point to 49.1 percent. The following month in June, a slight rise to 49.4 percent. Then in July, a slight drop to 49.2 percent.

Go back further to May 2005. Starting that month at 48.0 percent, Google drops each month through September 2005 to 45.1 percent, nearly three full points! Alarm bell time!

Perhaps at the time, some might have felt that way. But then you see the traffic come back up. As comScore noted, it might be that Google gets hit more by seasonal swings. If they have a heavier than normal school and university audience, perhaps that group is searching less during the summertime in the Northern Hemisphere.

When I'm looking at the figures, I'm watching to see if the line moves through important bands. Again, see the NetRatings chart above. Every fifth percent mark has a solid line. I'm less worried if Google goes up or down between the 45 and 50 percent marks. I'm more interested if it breaks out of that band in either direction for a long period of time.

That's one reason why when comScore figures were ringing some alarms with some analysts earlier this year, I felt pretty mellow about Yahoo. In the comScore stats, it was staying within the 25 to 30 percent band it had been in for several months. Moreover, the NetRatings figures had Yahoo pretty solid in the 20 to 25 percent range.

In contrast, it's really hard to be positive about MSN. comScore showed it marching out of the 15 to 20 percent range back in October and into the 10 to 15 percent band. OK, Yahoo stepped out of the 30 to 35 percent range around the same time. But NetRatings also showed MSN doing a long dead-man-walking decline, unlike the case with Yahoo. The latest NetRating figures have just taken it into the 5 to 10 percent range, from the 10 to 15 percent range it previously was in. Even more alarming is the fact that this decline all comes after significant spending MSN has done to try and build its search brand. That spending clearly hasn't helped.

I'll be watching over the next several months to see if the MSN decline reverses. Of course, domain "roll-ups" might be a factor.

Every service "rolls-up" a number of domains to create traffic figures. For example, the "Ask" figures from comScore will include Ask.com plus some Ask-powered web sites. NetRatings, in contrast, will count Ask.com traffic separately than traffic to Ask-powered sites such as iWon.

The MSN figures might not be counting some of the Windows Live traffic that Microsoft is generating. Windows Live is the new leading brand, and more and more traffic is being pushed there. I'm checking with NetRatings about this.

As a side note, I wish all the ratings services spelled-out exactly all the domains that are used to measure the traffic to respective services. It would make it much easier to know if they are neglecting anything important.

How about the other major players on the chart? You'll see AOL has a big spike in August 2005. I'm not sure what happened there, but it was probably a change to counting methodology. I'm checking with NetRatings on this. But that type of spike is another reason that taking two particular months and comparing them out of context with surrounding months can be dangerous.

Finally, there's Ask.com, which keeps plugging away. The key thing to keep in mind here, as I noted already, is that NetRatings measures for Ask.com while comScore measures for the entire Ask network.

Tomorrow, I'll look at some Hitwise figures. Hitwise was actually the first out this month with ratings from July. If you're itching to see them, jump on over here. Unlike comScore and NetRatings, they show Google making a gain from June 2006 to July 2006. Like the other two services, they do agree on a Yahoo gain between those months. Bill Tancer over there has also just done a weekly breakdown going into August that shows slight Yahoo and MSN gains and slight Google losses.

Also, just a last note of encouragement to all the rating services. I like them. I know they have problem and that the stats aren't perfect. But they give us all a starting place. The purpose of this series isn't to knock the services but rather help educate those who look at this figures on how to better assess them.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:21 AM | Permalink

August 21, 2006

comScore Figures Show First Google Decline For Nearly A Year, But What To Believe?

The latest search engine share figures from comScore are now out, and Google's nearly year-long continued rises have came to a halt in July 2006, according to comScore. But how much can you trust any of the figures that ratings services provide? In this post, I look at the latest comScore stats and begin a series about how to critically evaluate search share ratings.

I've been dealing with search ratings for 10 years now. I've seen all types of things in that time. I've watched as ratings services would suddenly pull their publicly reported information, only to resume it when a competitor came along. I've watched things like AltaVista get classified as a portal rather than a search engine or important subdomains of a particular search engine not get counted. I've been bemused at how a search engine will heartily endorse figures from a ratings service when they are positive then tell investors not to trust the figures when they go against them.

My best overall advice to anyone looking at these figures is:

Look for long-term trends. You want to view stats for several months in a row, not two isolated months compared to each other. Stats can and will plunge from one month to the next for all types of reasons, not the least due to a ratings service itself having some counting glitch. Similarly, comparing back from one month to the same time the previous year might not reflect counting changes that may have happened or been refined over that time. I want a trend line -- and a long one.
Look at figures from multiple services. For several months, comScore has painted a pretty bleak figure for Yahoo, showing share decreases. At least twice this year (January & July), Yahoo has had to warn analysts not to trust the comScore figures too much (and oh the irony of Yahoo now having hired the former comScore CEO this month). In contrast, NetRatings was showing Yahoo as pretty stable. If I'm going to declare Yahoo in trouble (and I didn't), I'm more likely to do that if more than one ratings service is reflecting a plunge of some time. If it's only one of them, then I'm more in "watch and see" mode.

Now let's jump into today's figures out of comScore, which are for share of all searches within the United States:

July 2006

Searches (Millions)

Searches Per Day (Millions)

Google

43.7%

2,753

91.8

Yahoo

28.8%

1,814

60.5

MSN

12.8%

806

26.9

AOL

5.9%

372

12.4

Ask

5.4%

340

11.3

Others

3.4%

214

7.1

NOTE: My figures for searches will vary slightly from comScore's as I'm working off the overall rounded 6.3 billion searches figure they provide multiplied by share percentages. I have to do that to calculate the share of "others" searches, which comScore does not provide. The comScore press release has precise figures.

Google's still shown as well above the rest. But the press release headline from comScore highlights a Yahoo victory:

Yahoo! Sites Register a Moderate Share Gain for the Second Consecutive Month

Indeed, some good news for Yahoo out of comScore for once. They have a gain that seems to come off of Google's loss.

Let's look at a big trend chart, then we'll do a drill down. Pulling the chart from my now updated comScore Media Metrix Search Engine Ratings page, we get this:

Who Gained & Lost In June & July

You can see how comScore's shown Yahoo having slight drops, then a bigger drop in January, then rises in June and July. In particular, if you go back to May 2006, Yahoo had a 28 percent share. In June, it rose to 28.5 percent. In July, a further rise to 28.8 percent.

What's fueling that gain? Maybe Yahoo Answers being popular and getting heavy promotion? Maybe something else? The answer is, we don't really know. But we can try to see who is losing.

Is Google the loser? Not in June. When Yahoo saw a gain in June, so did Google. Google went up from 44.2 percent in May to 44.7 percent. in June In contrast, MSN dropped from 13.1 percent to 12.8 percent and Ask dropped from 5.3 percent to 5.1 percent. Those drops fueled some of the gains for both Yahoo and Google.

AOL is the mystery player. comScore gave no figure for May 2006. Actually, it did -- 6.7 percent. But the following month, it clawed back that figure, saying:

Due to a definitional change occurring with June 2006 data, trended data for the Time-Warner Network are not available

Since we don't have a May 2006 figure, we can't tell if the June 2006 figure for AOL -- 5.6 percent -- was a gain from or loss to Google and Yahoo.

I've been through this type of thing before. Usually, it means that methodology has changed so much that the ratings service doesn't feel comfortable comparing figures under a new system to the old one. This note is unusual in that it's particular to AOL, rather than the methodology over all. It's also disturbing, because it suggests that all those months of AOL figures previously reported perhaps can't be trusted.

I'm asking comScore about this and will update. But let's move ahead to July. Again, the goal is to figure out who lost to Yahoo's gain. In July, it really was Google, mostly. Google dropped a full percentage point, 44.7 percent in June to 43.7 percent in July. Yahoo got some of that, a 0.3 percent rise to 28.8 percent. AOL got a 0.3 percent rise as well, coming up to 5.9 percent. The Ask network of sites also came up 0.3 percent, to 5.4 percent. MSN didn't budge.

Crisis for Google? Way, way too early to be saying stuff like that. As I said, I want to see several months of trending data from a particular player before I start issuing panic calls. For all I know, next month comScore will quietly reissue these figures that shows Google doing better.

Revising Data After The Fact

For instance, let's go back to May 2006. Did you know that a month after comScore released figures, they revised those? There was no big press release about it. It was an asterisk mention as part of the June 2006 figures.

What was different? Let's compare:

Company

Original

Revised

Difference

Google

44.1%

44.2%

0.1%

Yahoo

27.9%

28.0%

0.1%

MSN

12.9%

13.1%

0.2%

AOL

6.7%

n/a

???

Ask

5.3%

0.0%

MySpace

0.7%

n/a

???

Others

2.4%

9.4%

7.0%

Aside from AOL, there was no really big change among the players. But then again, this revision suddenly changed MSN from a fifth month in a row of either decreases or no gain to the different story of the first gain in five months.

MySpace The Search Monster?

Also notice how MySpace disappears off the chart, in the revised figures. What happened? Why did comScore stop reporting figures there? I'm checking on that as well, but my guess is that close attention to the MySpace figures may have backfired on comScore.

Let's go back to April 2006. That's the first time that out of the blue, we get search figures for MySpace. comScore told us:

MySpace.com has been added to the search engine rankings for April 2006, coming in at 6th place with 43 million search queries performed (0.6 percent share of the U.S. search market). Will this smaller player eventually be able to grab a substantial share of the search market due to the site's remarkable popularity?

That's press release bait, OK? That's a nugget you're putting out in hopes that the press will eat it up. And they do, eventually. For example, in MySpace, The 27.4 Billion Pound Gorilla over at TechCrunch, the article notes at the end:

MySpace also has the sixth largest market share among search engines, even though they aren’t, actually, a search engine.

I'll get to another more important press reference in a moment, but let me diverge on the "MySpace As Search Engine" idea. What's comScore counting as searches? From the May 2006 release:

qSearch includes Web searches originating from the search engines reported, other Web-based searches such as News and Image searches and channel searches conducted on portal sites (e.g., Finance and Movies). qSearch does not include Yellow Pages or Maps searches.

OK, people on MySpace searching for other MySpacers might be doing what's considered a "channel search." But that activity is extremely unlikely to translate into a search behavior that sends people to an external site or to an ad. It's simply a site search within MySpace. If that's the traffic being counted, then searches at a place like Microsoft for software support might warrant it a place on the list (and FYI, these exact types of searches have indeed gotten Microsoft mistakenly on these types of "popular search engines" lists in the past).

MySpace does allow people to search the web. Perhaps the searches counted really are only web searches (and I'm checking on this). If so, I'm still surprise to see the sudden emergence.

Why? Because of that 2.4 percent of traffic going to "others" in May 2006. Who are these others? Among them will be players like Infospace or Earthlink. For June 2006, I have NetRatings figures giving Dogpile (an Infospace property) a 0.5 percent share. That's NetRatings, not comScore, and for a different month as well. Still, it's really unusual for a new player like MySpace to just leap out of the blue like this over a more established lower tier player. When I've seen this in the past, it's simply been because suddenly, a metrics company has changed a definition and decided to count some new player that they previously ignored.

Back to MySpace. Last month, BusinessWeek cut loose with a big article about who it was seeking a search suitor, since it was such a big search powerhouse:

MySpace already drives a huge amount of traffic to search engines. It generates 100 million searches a month. In fact, 5% of all searches on the Web and 8% of all searches on Google are originated by people who come directly from MySpace.

Wow, pretty stunning numbers. And figures that frankly, I didn't believe. As I wrote in my review:

The story also gives new, amazing stats that MySpace generates 5 percent of all searches on the web. Hmm. Just a month ago, this was said to be 0.6% of all searches in the US, according to comScore. And 8 percent of all searches on Google come via MySpace? I'm checking with the BusinessWeek author, because those stats just don't make sense.

I did email the reporter, but I never heard back. Perhaps the email went astray (I mean that in all seriousness -- email does get lost or stuck in spam filters). But five percent of all searches on the web -- eight percent of all Google searches -- those are incredible numbers, if true. But they seem so untrue when you look at the 100 million figures per month stat that BusinessWeek also gives us.

The Ask network -- with a 5 percent share of just US searches -- generates 340 million searchers per month according to comScore (see the chart above). If MySpace really had 5 percent of ALL SEARCHES WEB-WIDE, then it should have far, far more than 300 million searches per month, much less 100 million.

I don't know that the BusinessWeek story came off comScore's press release bait. Heck, the stats aren't sourced at all. But when the figures start to fly and don't make sense, that's a good time for a ratings service to stop releasing them. The BusinessWeek figures weren't adding up, and perhaps that's one reason why comScore decided that MySpace no longer deserved the limelight. After listing it as a top search engine for April and May, from June onward, it fell back into the unitemized "Other" category.

I really like BusinessWeek, by the way, but this is the second time recently that I've also seen them do stumbles with figures. Many people couldn't believe the Valley Boys write-up where BusinessWeek gave Digg a $60 million valuation. Hey, I couldn't get past this section:

Digg's stature changed dramatically that day. It is now the 24th-most popular Web site in the U.S., nipping at the New York Times' (No. 19) and easily beating Fox News (No. 62), according to industry tracker Alexa.com.

Alexa? Alexa! BusinessWeek is going to use Alexa to tell us how popular a site is? Alexa, the toolbar that so many say is so easily manipulated? Honestly, I couldn't' believe it. In this story, I'm poking at comScore -- and later this week, I'll poke at Hitwise and NetRatings. But I won't even waste my time on looking at Alexa's data, since I long ago wrote it off as being useful. But if you don't believe me, check out Matt Cutts and his A Word About Metrics, Part II post. Why, if Digg can be so popular, so can Matt. He's almost as popular as Ask. Shortly, Barry Diller will be looking to acquire him.

MySpace The Google Enabler?

comScore's not the only one to play the MySpace press release bait game. Hitwise has been having fun with it, as well. Note what Om Malik wrote about why Google felt it had to partner with MySpace:

According to data collected by Hitwise, an Internet traffic tracking service, nearly 10.8% of Google’s traffic was coming from MySpace.com for the week ending July 29, 2006. Had Fox gone with Yahoo or Microsoft, it could have been a serious blow to Google.

Now let's step back a minute. MySpace has shot up in traffic over time, but until recently, I never heard any connection suggesting that Google was somehow gaining because of that popularity. Google was popular because it was Google and generated its own weather. Now, suddenly, Google might potentially lose 10 percent of its traffic to its site?

That's especially amazing to digest, considering that Google had no search partnership with MySpace at the time. The web search box at MySpace was (and still is for the moment, despite the Google-MySpace deal) powered by Yahoo. If anyone would lose this "massive" amount of traffic, it should be Yahoo. And since Yahoo clearly didn't fight tooth and nail for MySpace, I don't think that search box was generating much.

So how's Google getting all this supposed traffic from MySpace. I don't know -- and Hitwise doesn't seem to know, either. Let's go to the Hitwise post on MySpace traffic: MySpace and Google: What do the Numbers Say?:

In January of this year, Google received a little over 4% of their traffic from MySpace in our U.S. sample. As of the week ending July 29th, that percentage has grown to almost 11%, making MySpace the #1 upstream site for Google.

Since over the last year there has been no formal relationship between the two companies, this high volume of traffic flowing from MySpace to Google would most likely be the result of users using their Google toolbar or manually navigating to Google while engaged in their MySpace session. It would seem that this represents a great opportunity for Google to monetize a portion of that audience through AdSense listings and increase search traffic through greater exposure on MySpace.

To be clear, all Hitwise knows is that for the ISP data is monitors, it sees that a bunch of people who leave MySpace go to Google next. It doesn't know why but can only guess that people for some reason decide to go to Google after MySpace.

If those people change their minds, would that hurt Google? Maybe -- but then again, it's not 10 percent of ALL Google's traffic, as Om wrote. It's 10 percent of the US audience. Google's not given out country-by-country breakdowns that I've seen for some time, but in the past, they'd stressed that half their traffic came from outside the US. So that would reduce the blow. What reduces the blow even further is the fact that if people are doing this out of habit, they aren't likely to break that habit regardless of who ultimately got the MySpace deal.

Poking At The Other Metrics Services

Enough of MySpace -- let's get back to the Google death plunge. One of the other things I said to look at was how the other ratings services are viewing them. For now, I'm going to give you the highlights of what Hitwise had to say about July 2006:

As you can see, the top engines combined account for over 94% of all search volume in the US. Since we last released these numbers in June 2006, Google (www.google.com) has increased its share from 59.3% to 60.2%, Yahoo! Search (search.yahoo.com) has increased from 22.0% to 22.5% and MSN Search (search.msn.com) has decreased slightly from 12.1% to 11.8%.

As you can see, Hitwise is finding that all is good with Google plus supporting the Yahoo gain that comScore also sees. So is Google in trouble? I'd say it's way, way too early to predict anything like that.

Tomorrow, I'll take a closer look at Hitwise, poke some fingers into the service and do some trending data. On Wednesday, I'll spend time with NetRatings. Then hopefully on Thursday, I'm going to drag out my special patented three-on-one ratings chart that I haven't used since the days of NetRatings, comScore and RelevantKnowledge to help you understand how to tap into multiple services to see the trends you might want to believe.

Postscript: I sent comScore some follow-up questions, and here's what I received back.

Q. General Comments?

Q. What happened to AOL figures in May? Am I correct that you changed your methodology and so earlier figures are no longer comparable to recent ones. If so, what exactly changed?

In June, there was a dictionary change for AOL that contributed to some of the M/M decline in Time Warner searches in the US (the dictionary defines how the Time Warner property breaks out its sites into titles, channels and sub-channels). This change does not materially alter the year-over-year market share decline that Time Warner has experienced (down nearly 3 full share points from May 05 to May 06, the last full month before the dictionary change).

Q. What happened to MySpace? You started reporting it in April 2006 out of the blue, then by June, you stopped. Was MySpace traffic being counted before April 2006, or is that the first month you looked at searches there and counted them into the searches pie? Why did they stop being broken out in June? And were they really generating more searches than someone like the Infospace network? Finally, what searches are being counted -- even those internal to MySpace to find MySpacers?

MySpace is still included in qSearch market data, we’ve simply chosen not to report it on our monthly market share press releases. We typically issue market share data to the press for the top 5 search sites, and simply added MySpace for a couple of months to highlight to the market that we now have the site under measurement for Web search activity. In fact, comScore data show MySpace search activity trending very nicely over the last few months.

To clarify the specifics of our MySpace reporting, we provide data for Web search only; searches done on MySpace content (e.g., user profiles, video) are not include in the MySpace totals reported in qSearch.

Q. I notice you aren't counting yellow pages or maps searches. But Google considers any local search to be part of Google Maps. Does that mean all this traffic is getting omitted now?

We do not include map-only searches in qSearch or any of our other search tracking services. There is the initial question of whether a map request actually constitutes a search, but ultimately, low marketplace demand is the primary reason for our not reporting map searches. We have, instead, chosen to concentrate our efforts and resources in the areas of greatest importance to our major search clients (i.e., all of the major search engines).

However, maps that are accompanied by business listings (as you would find in Google Maps, if you searched for a business name category) are included in comScore’s Internet Yellow Pages (IYP) Search Share report. This report includes the leading IYP sites like SUperpages.com, plus the YP/business list search activity taking place on the portals. In other words, if the result is just a map, then comScore does not report that activity in any of its search reports; if the map includes or is part of Yellow Page listings, that activity is reported in our IYP Search Share report.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:16 AM | Permalink

August 8, 2006

Yahoo News Gains Search Engine News Market Share

comScore released a report showing Yahoo News has "31.2 million unique visitors" with 33 percent of all news traffic. Followed by Yahoo is MSNBC with 23.4 million or 25% share, then AOL News with 20.4 million unique visitors or 22% share. These numbers are based on June 2006 data.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 11:16 AM | Permalink

August 3, 2006

Google Reaches 60% Search Market Share

Bill Tancer posted over at his Hitwise blog data that shows Google has broke the 60% market share as of 7/29/06. Google has 60.2% search volume market share up from 59.3% in June, Yahoo has 22.5% share up from 22.0% and MSN has 11.8% share down from 12.1%.

Bill will be on the Search Engine Landscape Panel at SES San Jose this Monday with more stats for us.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:03 AM | Permalink

July 31, 2006

Microsoft, Google & Yahoo Make Business Week's Top 100 Best Global Brands

ResourceShelf reports on the Business Week Top 100 Global Brands release from this week. You can see from the interactive table that Microsoft remained in the number two slot, Google moved up to number 24 from the 38th position in 2005, and Yahoo also moved up to 55 from the 58th position in 2005.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:42 AM | Permalink

June 29, 2006

Google Knocks Off Apple On The Wired 40

The Wired 40 was just released and Google has secured the top spot, at number one this year. They have bumped off Apple, who last year ranked number one. Wired commented on Google with the following;

Less cuddly but more profitable than ever, the monster from Mountain View has rivals but no peers. Is it a search engine? A media company? A software provider? Who cares? Microsoft, for one. Get ready for the grudge match of the decade.

Wired is a huge Apple fan and supporter, as far as I know. For them to hand over the spot to Google, says something. Note that Yahoo is on the list at a respectable number 5.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:03 AM | Permalink

Google Knocks Off Apple On The Wired 40

The Wired 40 was just released and Google has secured the top spot, at number one this year. They have bumped off Apple, who last year ranked number one. Wired commented on Google with the following;

Wired is a huge Apple fan and supporter, as far as I know. For them to hand over the spot to Google, says something. Note that Yahoo is on the list at a respectable number 5.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 10:03 AM | Permalink

Google Knocks Off Apple On The Wired 40

The Wired 40 was just released and Google has secured the top spot, at number one this year. They have bumped off Apple, who last year ranked number one. Wired commented on Google with the following;

Wired is a huge Apple fan and supporter, as far as I know. For them to hand over the spot to Google, says something. Note that Yahoo is on the list at a respectable number 5.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 10:03 AM | Permalink

Google Knocks Off Apple On The Wired 40

The Wired 40 was just released and Google has secured the top spot, at number one this year. They have bumped off Apple, who last year ranked number one. Wired commented on Google with the following;

Wired is a huge Apple fan and supporter, as far as I know. For them to hand over the spot to Google, says something. Note that Yahoo is on the list at a respectable number 5.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 10:03 AM | Permalink

Yahoo Second In Market Share In China

TMCnet.com reports that Google is in third place in China, with 13.2% share. Yahoo is in second place with 21.1% market share and Baidu leads with 43.9%. TMCnet sources this information from the Beijing Modern Business Daily on page 1 from the Tuesday, June 27, 2006 edition.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:28 AM | Permalink

Yahoo Second In Market Share In China

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 9:28 AM | Permalink

Yahoo Second In Market Share In China

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 9:28 AM | Permalink

Yahoo Second In Market Share In China

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 9:28 AM | Permalink

June 23, 2006

PhotoBucket Has 44% Share of Photo Sharing Sites: Beating Yahoo & Flickr

The Hitwise blog posted what I found to be surprising statistics on what is the most popular photo sharing site. I would have thought Yahoo Photos or Flickr would be a one of the most popular services, but it looks like PhotoBucket has almost 44% of the share, compared with Yahoo Photos with only 18% share in the number two spot. Even more surprising, to me at least, is that Flickr has barely 6% share, ranking number six in the list. Hitwise tells me that Photobucket surpassed Yahoo! Photos in January 2006, and its share of visits increased by 34% in the four months from February 2006 to May 2006. Flickr increased 44% in the past four months, which explains why I thought Flickr was more popular then its current rank. More details at the Hitwise blog.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 11:10 AM | Permalink

PhotoBucket Has 44% Share of Photo Sharing Sites: Beating Yahoo & Flickr

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 11:10 AM | Permalink

PhotoBucket Has 44% Share of Photo Sharing Sites: Beating Yahoo & Flickr

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 11:10 AM | Permalink

PhotoBucket Has 44% Share of Photo Sharing Sites: Beating Yahoo & Flickr

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 11:10 AM | Permalink

Technorati Betting: New Link Bait Idea

Omar emailed me that he has posted a Technorati Blog Betting competition. Basically, you bet as much as you like, on the chances that a particular blog will be at the number one spot. As Threadwatch notes, Matt Cutts has 6 to 1 odds in this competition. They currently have Matt Cutts, Robert Scoble, Engadget, and some others in the competition. This site, nor is my site in the running. Currently, the Technorati top 100 shows me at #35, Philipp at #29, ShoeMoney at #52, John Battelle at #63 and Danny (SEW) at #69.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 11:00 AM | Permalink

Technorati Betting: New Link Bait Idea

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 11:00 AM | Permalink

Technorati Betting: New Link Bait Idea

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 11:00 AM | Permalink

Technorati Betting: New Link Bait Idea

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 11:00 AM | Permalink

June 21, 2006

Nielsen//NetRatings Stats Keep Google On Top In May 2006

Last month, Nielsen/NetRatings had Google hitting the 50 percent mark of percentage of searches handled in the United States (when rounded up from 49.8%). This month, Google slips back down very slightly to 49 percent. I've warned before that you should be wary of month-to-month changes. That said, here's the rundown, which gives Yahoo a percentage gain to Google's loss:

Search Engine April 2006 May 2006 Google 49.8% 49.1% Yahoo 21.9% 22.9% MSN 10.7% 10.6%

More from the full release at the end of this post. Meanwhile, we already had May 2006 stats from Hitwise, so how do the two compare?

May 2006 Hitwise NetRatings Google 59% 49% Yahoo 22% 23% MSN 12% 11%

comScore's May 2006 search query stats haven't yet been publicly released. Watch for them in a future post. Past NetRatings and comScore figures are here:

Yes, I'm working on getting the most recent stats added to those pages. Here's the full NetRatings release:

Nielsen//NetRatings today released May 2006 U.S. MegaView Search findings, including top search providers, ranked by total searches. Searches represent the total number of queries conducted at the Provider.

Table 1: Top 10 Search Providers for May 2006, Ranked by Searches (U.S.) Please view in a fixed-width font such as Courier.

+-----------------------+-----------+------------+-------------------+ | Provider | Searches | YOY Growth | Share of Searches | | | (000) | | | +-----------------------+-----------+------------+-------------------+ | Google Search | 2,783,169 | 32% | 49.1% | | Yahoo! Search | 1,298,915 | 34% | 22.9% | | MSN Search | 600,820 | 42% | 10.6% | | AOL Search | 363,431 | N/A | 6.4% | | Ask.com Search | 146,585 | 69% | 2.6% | | My Way Search | 129,270 | 67% | 2.3% | | iWon Search | 32,257 | 53% | 0.6% | | Dogpile.com Search | 29,416 | -25% | 0.5% | | EarthLink Search | 27,488 | -1% | 0.5% | | SBC Yellow Pages | 24,513 | -21% | 0.4% | +-----------------------+-----------+------------+-------------------+

Source: Nielsen//NetRatings MegaView Search, June 2006

Note: Due to a methodology change, year-over-year growth for AOL Search is unavailable.

Example: An estimated 2.8 billion search queries were conducted at Google Search, representing 49 percent of all search queries conducted during the given time period.

About Nielsen//NetRatings

NetRatings, Inc. (Nasdaq: NTRT) delivers leading Internet media and market research solutions, marketed globally under the Nielsen//NetRatings brand. With high quality, technology-driven products and services, Nielsen//NetRatings is the global standard for Internet audience measurement and premier source for online advertising intelligence, enabling clients to make informed business decisions regarding their Internet and digital strategies. The Nielsen//NetRatings portfolio includes panel-based and site-centric Internet audience measurement services, online advertising intelligence, user lifestyle and demographic data, e-commerce and transaction metrics, and custom data, research and analysis. For more information, please visit www.nielsen-netratings.com

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:15 AM | Permalink

Nielsen//NetRatings Stats Keep Google On Top In May 2006

Search Engine April 2006 May 2006 Google 49.8% 49.1% Yahoo 21.9% 22.9% MSN 10.7% 10.6%

More from the full release at the end of this post. Meanwhile, we already had May 2006 stats from Hitwise, so how do the two compare?

May 2006 Hitwise NetRatings Google 59% 49% Yahoo 22% 23% MSN 12% 11%

comScore's May 2006 search query stats haven't yet been publicly released. Watch for them in a future post. Past NetRatings and comScore figures are here:

Yes, I'm working on getting the most recent stats added to those pages. Here's the full NetRatings release:

Table 1: Top 10 Search Providers for May 2006, Ranked by Searches (U.S.) Please view in a fixed-width font such as Courier.

Source: Nielsen//NetRatings MegaView Search, June 2006

Note: Due to a methodology change, year-over-year growth for AOL Search is unavailable.

Example: An estimated 2.8 billion search queries were conducted at Google Search, representing 49 percent of all search queries conducted during the given time period.

About Nielsen//NetRatings

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 9:15 AM | Permalink

Nielsen//NetRatings Stats Keep Google On Top In May 2006

Search Engine April 2006 May 2006 Google 49.8% 49.1% Yahoo 21.9% 22.9% MSN 10.7% 10.6%

More from the full release at the end of this post. Meanwhile, we already had May 2006 stats from Hitwise, so how do the two compare?

May 2006 Hitwise NetRatings Google 59% 49% Yahoo 22% 23% MSN 12% 11%

comScore's May 2006 search query stats haven't yet been publicly released. Watch for them in a future post. Past NetRatings and comScore figures are here:

Yes, I'm working on getting the most recent stats added to those pages. Here's the full NetRatings release:

Table 1: Top 10 Search Providers for May 2006, Ranked by Searches (U.S.) Please view in a fixed-width font such as Courier.

Source: Nielsen//NetRatings MegaView Search, June 2006

Note: Due to a methodology change, year-over-year growth for AOL Search is unavailable.

Example: An estimated 2.8 billion search queries were conducted at Google Search, representing 49 percent of all search queries conducted during the given time period.

About Nielsen//NetRatings

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 9:15 AM | Permalink

Nielsen//NetRatings Stats Keep Google On Top In May 2006

Search Engine April 2006 May 2006 Google 49.8% 49.1% Yahoo 21.9% 22.9% MSN 10.7% 10.6%

More from the full release at the end of this post. Meanwhile, we already had May 2006 stats from Hitwise, so how do the two compare?

May 2006 Hitwise NetRatings Google 59% 49% Yahoo 22% 23% MSN 12% 11%

comScore's May 2006 search query stats haven't yet been publicly released. Watch for them in a future post. Past NetRatings and comScore figures are here:

Yes, I'm working on getting the most recent stats added to those pages. Here's the full NetRatings release:

Table 1: Top 10 Search Providers for May 2006, Ranked by Searches (U.S.) Please view in a fixed-width font such as Courier.

Source: Nielsen//NetRatings MegaView Search, June 2006

Note: Due to a methodology change, year-over-year growth for AOL Search is unavailable.

Example: An estimated 2.8 billion search queries were conducted at Google Search, representing 49 percent of all search queries conducted during the given time period.

About Nielsen//NetRatings

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 9:15 AM | Permalink

Microsoft Employees Use Google More Than MSN?

Philipp Lenssen reported on a Andrew Hitchcock post that detailed search engine usage by search engine firm. It appears that Microsoft employees prefer Google to MSN Search when searching the web. At Microsoft 66.31 percent use Google, 19.65 percent use MSN and 10.18 percent use Yahoo. Yahoo employees aren't afraid to use Google search either, with 29.80 percent of searches conducted on Google and 68.87 percent on Yahoo Search. Google employees seem to be 100 percent loyal to Google search, based on the data.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:48 AM | Permalink</