October 23, 2009

46% of Local Searchers Visit Businesses In-Store

46% of local searchers make in-store visits, according to data released to eMarketer by TMP Directional Marketing and comScore. The number is up 12% over last year.

Meanwhile, for "general searches," 34% visited stores, but this was only up 1% over last year. Internet yellow pages searchers also came in at 34%, up from 29% last year. The overall average of searchers ending up in-store was 37%.

What local searchers are looking for are businesses that provide the products and services they're looking for. After they've found that, they look for address and location information and then a phone number.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 2:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

October 14, 2009

We Watch More YouTube Videos than We Conduct Google Searches

Now, we all know search is important. And we all know that Google is the leading search engine.

But here's a factoid that continues to amaze marketers:

In August 2009, Americans watched 10 billion videos on YouTube. That same month, Americans conducted 9 billion searches on Google.

Yep, Americans watched a billion more YouTube videos than they conducted Google searches.

The data comes from comScore, a reputable source. And the reason that it may have flown under the radar screen is that it comes from two different reports.

The YouTube data comes from comScore Video Metrix, which reported that 120.5 million Americans watched an average of 82.6 videos per viewer.

The Google data comes from comScore qSearch, which reported that 169.2 million American conducted an average of 53.2 queries per searcher.

So, do you want to be found when someone conducts a search for a relevant term on Google? Of course you do.

But do you want to be found when someone looks for a relevant video on YouTube? You should.

A lot of marketers are trying to get their arms around social media -- like Facebook and Twitter. These are both important. But YouTube is a video sharing site -- which is also a form of social media.

And according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 62% of Internet users in the U.S. have watched video on a video sharing site. This compares to 46%, who have used a social networking site, and 11%, who have used Twitter.

So, why is YouTube often left off the marketing to-do list? It's a mystery.

But, you can start to get your arms around the topic by watching the YouTube video below.

Greg Jarboe of SEO-PR discusses YouTube and Video Marketing at SES London 2009

You can also get a sense of why YouTube is neither fish nor fowl by reading the TubeMogul report entitled, "How do people discover videos online?" More than 45% of viewers find videos through direct navigation to a video site -- i.e. going to YouTube and running a search or clicking around the featured or related videos. But more than 44% of viewers find videos embedded in blogs.

Finally, you can attend the YouTube & Video Optimization session at SES Chicago 2009. I'll tackle this issue head on -- and provide you with proven, practical guidelines for developing and implementing video marketing for your organization.

With more YouTube videos being watched in America than there are searches being conducted on Google, you will want to find out what it takes to get your videos discovered, watched and shared.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 8:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)

August 31, 2009

Global Search Market Tops Over 100 Billion Searches a Month

comScore has just released a study of the global search market that shows more than 113 billion searches were conducted in July 2009. This represents a 41 percent increase compared to a year ago.

Google attracted significantly more searches than any other search engine with 76.7 billion searches conducted, giving it 67.5 percent market share. Yahoo! ranked second worldwide with 8.9 billion searches (7.8 percent share), followed closely by Chinese search engine Baidu with 8 billion searches (7.0 percent share). Most of the top search properties worldwide experienced significant growth in search query volume versus last year, with Russian search engine Yandex growing at the fastest rate (94 percent) among the top ten.

It is worth noting that Europe accounted for the highest share of searches at 32.1 percent, followed by Asia Pacific (30.8 percent) and North America (22.1 percent). Among the five global regions, Latin America exhibited the heaviest search behavior per person with an average of 13 search usage days in July and 130 searches per searcher. Europe had the second highest overall search volume per person (117 searches per searcher) while North America exhibited the second heaviest frequency (12.5 search usage days per searcher).

This makes it as important to attend SES Berlin November 24-25, 2009, as it does to attend SES Chicago December 7-10, 2009. Why?

As Mike Grehan, the newly-anointed VP and Global Content Director at SES, SEW, and ClickZ, told me earlier this month, search isn't a static topic. The changes in the industry are accelerating. Can anyone afford to be behind the times in this new era?

Mike Grehan, the new VP and Global Content Director, ties social media to search, SES San Jose 2009

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 3:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Global Searches Increase by 41% Compared to a Year Ago

comScore has released global search market data showing that search is still on the rise in a big way all across the world. Overall, more than 113 billion searches were conducted in July 2009, up 41% compared to the year prior. Google dominated the market with 76 billion searches. No other search engine came close to that number of searches.

All the major search engines saw increases except for AOL. Yahoo! and Baidu were the only search engines to see single digit growth, while Russian search engine Yandex grew a whopping 94%

Europe enjoys the highest share of searches, at 32.1%, while searchers in Latin American conduct more searches per person than the rest of the world.

What do you think of comScore's global search data? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 3:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

August 19, 2009

Bing Only Search Engine in Top 5 to Gain in July 2009 (And For Two Months Straight)

comScore has released their search market share rankings for July 2009 and Bing continues to gain share. In June, they gained 0.4% share and last month, they gained 0.5% share. That's almost 1% since launch, which I personally find impressive.

Google and Yahoo! are the losers, both losing 0.3% in share last month. Ask and AOL held steady with no gains or losses.

Bing was also the only search to grow its total search queries in July 2009. This also happened in June, when Bing was the only one to gain. Bing saw 3% gains in search queries in June, followed by a 2% increase in July for a total of 5% increase in just two months.

Meanwhile, YouTube's growth slowed last month to just 1%. YouTube has been on quite a tear recently and experienced a whopping 7% growth in June. The JK Wedding Dance video was huge in July, so perhaps they're reaching market saturation.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 12:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 30, 2009

Microsoft and comScore Partner Up to Develop Online Branding Measurement Tool

Microsoft and comScore are teaming up to create a new digital ad planning tool. Dubbed the Reach and Frequency Planner, the tool will enable advertisers to predict reach, frequency and audience composition at the ad placement level. Audience measurement will combine ad serving data from Microsoft with demographic information from comScore.

After the ad is placed, tracking will be enabled to see how closely the end result reflected the prediction.

Ultimately, the Reach and Frequency Planner is designed to measure branding efforts in digital advertising.

"The perception that traditional branding metrics are not possible or meaningful for digital media is misguided," said Scott Howe, corporate vice president of the Advertiser and Publisher Solutions group at Microsoft. "We believe online advertising won't maximize its appeal to brand marketers until the basic metrics they've relied on for years are available in digital media plans. This requires the cooperation of digital publishers and panel measurement organizations, which our collaboration with comScore will accomplish."

One aim of the tool is to help which demographic opportunity is best. If you're reaching women aged 18-34, will an opportunity to get 10 million impressions on one group of placements perform better or worse than another group that gets 5 million? The tool will help you decide. In the end, this should help advertisers with budgeting issues as well.

"Brand advertisers need the ability to evaluate reach and frequency by audience composition in ways that are actionable and accountable," said Gian Fulgoni, comScore chairman and co-founder. "Current online reach and frequency metrics are typically computed at the site level. Measuring reach and frequency at the ad placement level is more precise because it shows the reach of the ad campaign that can actually be achieved, the true potential frequency and the specific demos of that audience."

All of this will help digital marketers gain street cred with execs who are attached to traditional advertising measurement methods.

" This new hybrid approach to digital media planning offers the granular campaign-level analysis and streamlined planning capabilities upon which brand advertisers have long relied in the traditional media environment," added Fulgoni.

The Reach and Frequency Planner will immediately open to a closed beta.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 6:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 16, 2009

Microsoft Steals Tiny Share from Yahoo! in comScore's June 2009 Rankings

comScore has released their June 2009 rankings and the search market share landscape looks the same as it has for a long time. Yahoo! lost 0.5% of share, which Microsoft picked up the majority of, presumably with the launch of Bing.

Another little nugget of hope for Microsoft: while the volume of search queries declined for Google and Yahoo!, Microsoft saw a 3% increase in June.

Here's the raw data:

Search Market Share

Query Volume

YouTube is continuing its trend of surpassing Yahoo! in search query volume:

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 1:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 23, 2009

Social Media Show Big Search Jumps, Google Drops For May The comScore's monthly numbers show a drop in growth for Google, Yahoo and MSN, yet an increase for social sites Facebook and Craigslist over last month was noted. Google's numbers fell to 65% of search share - a 2% drop from last month - while Craigslist gained 12 percent. comScore Expanded Search Query Report May 2009 vs. April 2009 Total U.S. - Home/Work/University Locations Source: comScore qSearch

Expanded Search Entity Search Queries (MM) Apr-09 May-09 Percent Change May-09 vs. Apr-09 Total Expanded Search 22,067 21,818 -1% Google Sites 13,041 13,035 0% Google 9,830 9,680 -2% YouTube/All Other 3,211 3,355 4% Yahoo! Sites 3,161 3,021 -4% Yahoo! 3,135 2,995 -4% All Other 26 26 0% Microsoft Sites* 1,250 1,194 -4% MSN-Windows Live 1,158 1,103 -5% Microsoft/All Other 92 91 -1% AOL LLC 795 721 -9% AOL Search Network 427 374 -12% MapQuest/All Other 368 347 -6% Ask Network 705 691 -2% Ask.com 402 382 -5% MyWebSearch.com/ All Other 303 309 2% craigslist, inc. 583 651 12% Fox Interactive Media 666 644 -3% MySpace Sites 658 636 -3% All Other 8 8 0% eBay 654 634 -3% Amazon Sites 188 185 -2% Facebook.com 176 184 5%

Posted by Frank Watson at 11:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 17, 2009

Calm Before the Bing Storm: May 2009 comScore Ranking Remain Steady

Not a whole lot changed from April to May 2009 in terms of core search share, but it will shock no one that Google still saw the biggest benefit. Overall there was a 3% decline in searches, and perhaps Memorial Day weekend had people partying instead of searching.

The biggest change, albeit still a small one, was Google upping its search share by 0.8%.

When looking at expanded searches, everyone takes a hit - except for YouTube, which saw a sweet 4% increase month over month.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 6:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Bing's Bang Continues in Week Two

New data from comScore shows that Bing's big bang launch in week one has carried over to week two. The percentage of internet users searching Bing continued to increase and the search share enjoyed a slight uptick as well.

"It appears that Microsoft Bing has continued to generate interest from the market for the second consecutive week," said Mike Hurt, comScore senior vice president. "These early data reflect a continued positive market reaction to Bing in the initial stages of its launch."

Anecdotally, I've been hearing great things about people enjoying searching on Bing as well as increased conversions on adCenter.

What has been your Bing experience? Share in the comments below.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

June 10, 2009

Audience for Local Content Accessed by Mobile Devices Grows 51% in a Year

It's no secret that the mobile internet is on the rise, and accessing local information while on-the-go is growing by leaps and bounds. The number of people accessing local content via mobile devices grew by 51% in March 2009 over March 2008, according to comScore.

By far, the mobile browser is the most popular source for accessing local information. 20.7 million users did so in March 2009, an increase of 34% over March 2008

However, mobile apps are the fastest growing, increasing by 83% year-over-year. SMS (aka text messaging) grew 72%. Mobile apps and SMS still trail far behind mobile browsers at 11.3 million users and 11.7 million users respectively for March 2009.

Among the types of content, online directories had the highest percentage of growth, followed by restaurants, maps, and movies.

With hot new phones like the Palm Pre and iPhone 3G S, mobile will only continue to grow and grow. Be sure to get your local content out there and optimize for mobile search!

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 3:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

June 9, 2009

Initial comScore Data Confirms Bing's First Week Success

Last week, StatCounter was the first to release data showing Bing doing well in its first week. Now, comScore data seems to corroborate that sentiment, albeit not the extreme success in StatCounter's numbers.

comScore compared data from Microsoft's search sites the week before Bing's launch to the first 5 days it was live. Check it out:

Of course, it remains to be seen if this is the beginning of a nice momentum or if it's all out of curiosity.

"These initial data suggest that Microsoft Bing has generated early interest, resulting in a spike in search engagement and an immediate term improvement to Microsoft's position in the search market," said Mike Hurt, comScore senior vice president. "So far it appears that the lifts in searcher penetration and engagement have held relatively steady throughout the five-day period. The ultimate performance of Bing depends on the extent to which it generates more trial through its extensive launch campaign and whether it retains those trial users. It appears it is off to a good start."

What do you think is Bing's fate? Let us know in the comments.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 2:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

June 4, 2009

152 Million U.S. Internet Users Watched 16.8 Billion Online Videos in April

comScore has just released April 2009 data from the comScore Video Metrix service, which shows that nearly 152 million U.S. Internet users watched 16.8 billion online videos during the month, representing an increase of 16 percent over March. This means 78.6 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video in April, and the average online video viewer watched 385 minutes of video, or 6.4 hours.

According to a press release, "A significant increase in video viewing at YouTube during April contributed to the month's sizeable gains."

107.1 million viewers watched 6.8 billion videos on YouTube.com -- which is 63.5 videos per viewer. By comparison, 49 million viewers watched 387 million videos on MySpace.com -- which is 7.9 videos per viewer. About 45.4 million viewers watched 355.2 million videos on Yahoo! Sites -- which is 7.8 videos per viewer. And 40.1 million viewers watched almost 397 million videos on Hulu -- which is an average of 9.9 videos per viewer.

In other words, YouTube not only has an audience that is more than twice as large, this audience also watches six to eight times more videos per month.

At SES London 2009, I interviewed Li Evans about online video. She was with KeyRelevance back then, but is now the Director of Social Media at Serengeti Communications. Li talked about how putting your brand out via YouTube is becoming a new marketing channel for companies.

Li will also be one of the panelists at SES Toronto next week in the session "Optimizing for Video Search: Virgin Territory?" The other panelists will be Gregory Markel, Founder/President, Infuse Creative, LLC, and Amanda Watlington, Owner, Searching for Profit.

Liana Evans, KeyRelevance, on video branding strategy at SES London

The moderator of the "Optimizing for Video Search: Virgin Territory?" session will be Mona Elesseily, Director of Marketing Strategy, Page Zero Media. If you go to SES Toronto, remember to compliment Mona for having, "Nice shoes." I forgot at one conference and paid dearly for my oversight.

Mona Elesseily of Page Zero Media and Greg Jarboe of SEO-PR compare their "nice shoes" at SES New York.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 5:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

June 3, 2009

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Training Workshops Offered Following SES Toronto Conference

This just handed me: Search Engine Strategies is offering search engine marketing training workshops following next week's SES conference and expo in Toronto. In case you've been pre-occupied by other news and events, the largest search engine marketing conference and expo in Canada will be held at the Sheraton Centre Toronto June 8-10, 2009.

According to the folks at comScore, there were 3.5 billion expanded searches in Canada during March 2009. Google Sites had an 80.7 percent share, Microsoft Sites had 4.9 percent, and Yahoo! Sites 4.5 percent. During the same month, there were 21.0 billion expanded searches in the United States. Google Sites had a 58.8 percent share, Yahoo! Sites had a 14.7 percent share, and Microsoft Sites a 5.9 percent share.

The event is organized and programmed in cooperation with the SES Advisory Board, Search Engine Watch and Andrew Goodman, the founder and president of Toronto-based Page Zero Media. According to Goodman, "These workshops provide the practices, applications, and hands-on exposure you need to become and remain a top performer in your field. This in-depth training in a small class setting ensures that your instructor is accessible for informal one-on-one or small group discussions. Regardless where you are in the SEO and SEM process, you will leave these intensive workshops with the necessary skills to improve your business results and take your search engine marketing to another level."

The SEM training workshops will be held on Wednesday, June 10, 2009. They are:

Search Marketing Boot Camp (8:00am-5:00pm): This search engine marketing training workshop will be taught by Jennifer Evans Laycock and Matt Bailey of SiteLogic. With search engine marketing quickly expanding beyond the simple realm of keyword research, on-page optimization and traditional paid search campaigns, it's becoming more and more difficult for businesses to know how and where to break into the mix with their own search related marketing efforts. If you are planning on attending Search Engine Strategies Toronto, but are not yet familiar with the nuances of search engine marketing, link building, viral marketing and online reputation management, this workshop will provide you with a crash-course in all things search marketing related.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Workshop (8:00am-12:00pm): This SEO training workshop will be taught by Shari Thurow of Omni Marketing Interactive. A search-engine friendly Web site is a user-friendly, search-friendly, and persuasive site that converts visitors into buyers. In order for a site to be search-engine friendly, it must meet the terms and conditions set forth by Google and the other search engines. Additionally, the site must satisfy the needs of site visitors. Ultimately, the site must be profitable for the Web site owner. Can a single site satisfy all of these groups? This workshop will demonstrate that these skills are essential for building a user-friendly, search-friendly, and persuasive site that converts visitors into buyers.

Google AdWords Tactics to Improve Your ROI (1:00pm-5:00pm): This Google AdWords training workshop will be taught by Brad Geddes, bgTheory.com. Learn how to spice up your AdWords account by applying tactics learned in this session. You will first dive into the Psychology of Search that shows how consumers think and act throughout the search process. Next, you will learn how to choose the correct keywords to take control of when your ad is displayed. Then, you will study how effective ad copy can generate more clicks and increase your conversion rate. The landing page is fundamental to increasing conversions, and the session will cover usability and conversion optimization. Finally, you will learn everything you need to know about optimizing your account for Quality Score.

For more information about SES Toronto 2009, go to rates and registration details. Tell them the hoser from the Search Marketing News Blog at Search Engine Watch sent you. No, it won't get you a discount. But it will let me know if anyone is reading this post.

Participants may register for training in addition to the SES Toronto conference or independently, as workshops take place on the Wednesday after the event. To follow news about SES Toronto 2009 on Twitter, go to http://twitter.com/SES_Toronto.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 7:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 18, 2009

Search Market Share Remains Stable in comScore's April 2009 Rankings

comScore has released its April 2009 search engine rankings and things remained relatively stable. The good news is that for 4 of the top 5 engines, search queries were on the rise:

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 2:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 15, 2009

Search Plus Display Still Hottest Online Ad Combo in Q1 2009

Yesterday, comScore held its State of the U.S. Online Retail Economy for the first quarter of 2009. Their data showed that search is still a potent way to reach customers online, but driving consumers to search via display advertising is even more powerful.

While most categories are taking a hit due to the recession, some are still experiencing growth:

comScore said that many people are choosing to save instead of spend. Consumers with household incomes of $100k or higher and those in older demographics were more likely to save and cut back on spending (since more of their income is disposable and many have lost savings via the stock market).

Still, when consumers do make purchases, the internet remains a valuable resource:

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 3:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 14, 2009

Twitter Hockey Stick Continues to Take Shape in comScore April 2009 Stats

With the help of Oprah, the hockey stick that is Twitter growth stats continued to take shape in April 2009, according to comScore data. Twitter saw 17 million visitors last month, quadrupling its numbers over two months:

However, with Twitter's loyalty problem, will Oprah's fans stick around? Or will this become the peak in a rollercoaster?

What do you think will happen with Twitter's growth? Leave it in the comments.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 1:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

April 29, 2009

Hulu Surpasses Yahoo Sites in Online Video Race for March 2009

Looks like the momentum created by an ad campaign that began during the Superbowl continues to bring a boost to Hulu. The online video joint effort by NBC and Fox landed in the top 3 video sites in March 2009, something comScore says is a first. Hulu pushed Yahoo! sites to position number 4. Google, with its ownership of YouTube, and Fox Interactive, with its ownership of MySpace, still dominated the top two spots respectively:

More juicy data nuggets from the March 2009 online video space include:

77.8 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
The average online video viewer watched 327 minutes of video, or nearly 5.5 hours.
99.7 million viewers watched 5.9 billion videos on YouTube.com (59.1 videos per viewer).
47.4 million viewers watched 349 million videos on MySpace.com (7.4 videos per viewer).
Hulu accounted for 2.6 percent of videos viewed, but 4.9 percent of all minutes spent watching online video.
The duration of the average online video was 3.4 minutes.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 3:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 15, 2009

Google Continues Dominance in March 2009 comScore Search Engine Rankings

comScore has released their March 2009 search engine ranking data and it should come as no surprise that Google is growing their share and their overall searches. While the share keeps shifting among Yahoo!, Microsoft, AOL, and Ask, all 5 of the "big" engines are growing their overall searches, although some are growing more than others.

March 2009 Search Engine Market Share:

March 2009 overall Searches in Millions:

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 4:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 26, 2009

iPhone Advances Mobile Search in the UK

comScore has released data about iPhone users in the UK and compared to other mobile devices, the iPhone is certainly spurring on mobie search.

55% of iPhone users conduct searches on their devices, while just 32% of smartphone users and 12% of all mobile phone users search on their phones.

In fact, the iPhone beats smartphones and other mobile phones in every major category from email to mobile music to social networking:

The downside? The iPhone has yet to become mainstream in the UK.

"The iPhone is indeed an early adopter phenomenon in the United Kingdom," said Alistair Hill, analyst, comScore. "While the device's ease of use is certainly contributing to the lift we see in mobile media consumption, the fact that the device requires a subscription package that includes an unlimited data plan is also a contributing factor. However, it is also important to note that while nearly all iPhone owners are consuming mobile media, the device is in the hands of only two percent of mobile phone users in the UK."

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

March 16, 2009

February 2009 Sees Increase in Search Queries

comScore has released search rankings for February 2009. When they release rankings, they compare them to the month before. Of course, that's a bit of funky methodology since the two months will inevitably have a different amount of days (with the exception of a July/August comparison).

In this case, February needs even more careful inspection. Yours truly has taken a look at the numbers from last February, a leap year, and compared them to this February.

The following numbers are by the million. For example, the total number of searches for February 2009 was 13.1 billion, but below, it's represented as 13,104:

(Click on the image to view larger graphic)

Here's the data comparing to January 2009:

Here's a comparison of the search market share. As you can see, Google continues its dominance:

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

March 12, 2009

Yahoo! Search Soars in Japan

Searches on Yahoo! sites grew 13% year-over-year in January - in Japan. Google sites, including YouTube grew just 5%. There is a caveat. This comScore data doesn't count mobile searches, and mobile is big in Japan.

Yahoo! enjoys 50% of searches in the Japanese search market:

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 27, 2009

The fourth estate is dead; long live the fourth estate

Back in May 2005, Linda Rutherford sent me an email with the subject line: "Demise of the fourth estate." Linda is now the Vice President of Communications and Strategic Outreach at Southwest Airlines, but she is a former a reporter for the Dallas Times Herald newspaper.

In her email, Linda wrote, "If you have a few moments, please take a look at this short video. It's an interesting short movie from the Museum of Media History predicting the demise of the fourth estate.

"The scenario is entertaining, a bit frightening and not too far-fetched.

"It hints at the monumental changes afoot in how consumers will learn about news and form opinions about brands.

"Thought given your role you would enjoy this creative prediction of what's to come."

Linda was right. The 8-minute video by Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson is a bit frightening. And the scenario it depicted was not too far fetched: "In the year 2014, The New York Times has gone offline. The Fourth Estate's fortunes have waned. What happened to the news?"

The same day that Linda sent her email, The New York Times Company announced a "targeted staff reduction program that will include approximately 190 employees at The New York Times and the New England Media Group, which includes The Boston Globe."

While the staff reduction represented less than 2% of the New York Times Company's total workforce back in 2005, the cuts didn't end there.

In its report on The State of the News Media 2006, the Project for Excellence in Journalism, asked, "Will we recall this as the year when journalism in print began to die?"

In December 2007, I wrote an article for Search Engine Watch entitled, "Blogs are the new trade press." I observed, "In many industries, the trade press has imploded." In our industry, I reported that online publications and group blogs generated close to 88 percent of the coverage of SES Chicago and PubCon. (The remaining 11 percent was - you guessed it - press releases.)

A year later, I reported on the battery of online video crews interviewing speakers between sessions at SES Chicago 2008. I also interviewed Abby Johnson of WebProNews about this trend. Abby is a pioneer in the field and has been producing videos for the WebProNews Video Blog for years.

Abby Johnson, WebProNews, discusses the top trends at SES Chicago

We're now halfway between 2004, the year that Museum of Media History made its predection, and 2014, the date when it predicted the demise of the fourth estate. So, I think it's time to declare: The fourth estate is dead; long live the fourth estate!"

Yes, print journalism continues to implode. The Rocky Mountain News, Colorado's oldest newspaper, is publishing its last edition today. The Chicago Tribune and LA Times have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The Christian Science Monitor is going "all digital." US News & World Report is now published every other week. PC Magazine is going "all digital."

Even in my home town, The Boston Globe is cutting 50 jobs in its newsroom, fifth newsroom staff reduction since 2001. At its peak in 2000, the Globe newsroom had 552 full-time jobs. When the latest cuts are complete, there will be about 300 full-time newsroom and editorial employees, plus another 29 news employees at Boston.com.

At the same time that print media are imploding, blogs are exploding into a global phenomenon that has hit the mainstream. According to eMarketer, there were 22.6 million US bloggers in 2007 (12 percent of Internet users) and 94.1 million US blog readers (50 percent).

And comScore Video Metrix reports that Nearly 150 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 96 videos per viewer in December 2008, or a record 14.3 billion online videos during the month. This means 78.5 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video in December. The duration of the average online video was 3.2 minutes. So, the average online video viewer watched 309 minutes of video, or more than 5 hours.

Now, this doesn't mean that all of the predictions in the Museum of Media History video turned out to be right. For example, it predicted that Google would acquire TiVo. It didn't. Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion instead.

Still, I predict that you'll be able to see the new fourth estate for yourself at SES New York 2009. There will be lots of bloggers and a bunch of videographers. And, who knows, we might even see a print reporter or two -- attending sessions like "Publishers & Agencies: New Business Models for Changing Times", "Video Search Engine Optimization: 2009 and Beyond" and "News Search SEO."

I'll be at all three of these sessions, so I'll let you know if my prediction comes true.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 7:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 24, 2009

U.S. Online Search Behavior Mimicks Economy

comScore has released data revealing search behavior that reflects sentiment about the economy in the United States. Searches for terms like coupons, unemployment and bankruptcy are experiencing triple digit growth.

The younger you are and the less you make, the more likely you are to conduct such searches:

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 1:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

February 19, 2009

Yahoo! Steals Search Share from Google in January 2009

Yahoo! gained 0.5 percentage points in comScore search engine rankings for January 2009. Google just happened to lose the same amount of percentage points during the same month.

But they're not the only two swapping points. Microsoft stole 0.2% from Ask.com.

These are small percentage points, so things mostly stayed steady. If these trends were to keep up, that's when things could get a little interesting. So, stay tuned. In the meantime, here's the raw data:

YouTube is still giving Yahoo! a run for its money.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 8:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 5, 2009

YouTube Continues Online Video Dominance in December 2008

comScore has released online video data for December 2008, and, as expected, Google-owned YouTube continued to dominate the field. YouTube accounts for 99 percent of video viewing on Google sites, which saw almost 6 billion video views in December.

YouTube saw over 100 million unique visitors, a milestone first achieved in October 2008. The total number of unique video viewers was 150 million, meaning 2 out of 3 uniques visit YouTube. (Keep in mind, people can visit more than one site, of course.)

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

January 26, 2009

Global Internet Audiences Exceeds 1 Billion in December 2008

Last month, the global internet audience surpassed 1 billion, according to comScore. Asia-Pacific leads the pack at 41 percent share with Europe coming in at second at 28%.

Broken down by country, China is in the lead, with USA in second:

And here are the top sites:

“Surpassing one billion global users is a significant landmark in the history of the Internet,” said Magid Abraham, President and Chief Executive Officer, comScore, Inc. “It is a monument to the increasingly unified global community in which we live and reminds us that the world truly is becoming more flat. The second billion will be online before we know it, and the third billion will arrive even faster than that, until we have a truly global network of interconnected people and ideas that transcend borders and cultural boundaries.”

It's still amazing to me that 5 billion people are not using the internet, despite my travels to underdeveloped areas of the world. I wonder just how quickly that second billion will get online. What say you? Leave a comment about your thoughts on reaching this milestone.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 8:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 19, 2009

Search Engine Share Remains Flat Month-Over-Month in December 2008, According to comScore

comScore has released its December 2008 search engine share rankings. Despite a 3% increase in overall searches, the share among the search engines changed little from November.

12.7 billion core searches were conducted in December, with Google seeing 8 billion of them:

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 6, 2009

Online Video Views for November 2008 Up 34% Year Over Year

comScore has released the stats for online video viewing in the United States for November 2008. Overall, the number of videos viewed was up 34% from November 2007.

YouTube-fueled Google sites saw almost the same number of visitors as they did in October, which saw 100 million unique visitors. This time, it was 98 million.

Other interesting tidbits:

77 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
The average online video viewer watched 273 minutes of video.
97 million viewers watched 5.1 billion videos on YouTube.com (52.3 videos per viewer).
52.5 million viewers watched 371 million videos on MySpace.com (7.1 videos per viewer).
The duration of the average online video was 3.1 minutes.
The duration of the average online video viewed at Hulu was 11.9 minutes, higher than any other video property in the top ten.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

December 31, 2008

Online Holiday Shopping Down 3% Overall for 2008

It's the news I hoped I didn't have to share, but alas it has arrived. We hoped during the flat Black Friday and decent Cyber Monday that we could edge out the holiday season with a slight gain. But while web site traffic was up by 5% to retail sites this holiday season, it didn't translate into an increase in sales. Instead, e-tailers saw an overall decline in holiday sales of 3% in 2008, according to comScore

“The 2008 online holiday shopping season has declined 3 percent versus year ago, falling behind our expectation of flat sales this year,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. “This marks the first time we've seen negative growth rates for the holiday season since we began tracking e-commerce in 2001. The combination of having five fewer shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas and the severe economic headwinds faced by consumers has made this a really tough season for retailers, both offline and online.”

The good news, in my humble opinion, is that 2007, the year to which 2008 is being compared to, was somewhat of a banner year. It was up 19% over 2006. So, 2008 was still up 16% over two years ago. 2006 was also a huge year over 2005. I think when we hear Wall Street folks talk about the markets correcting themselves, this 3% decline is symbolic of that. I just don't know how the growth of online sales in 2006-2007 could really have been sustained.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 8:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

December 24, 2008

Online Spending Soared Last Weekend Before Christmas by 98%

You didn't read that wrong. Online spending increased by 98% last weekend, compared to last year's last weekend before Christmas.

A winter weather event in the Northeast likely caused the surge, which may have come at the expense of brick and mortar stores. But let's take the good news where we can get it.

Even better news if you look at a historical context is that 2007 was an unusually high spending year compared to the years around it. It kind of bucked the trend. If the growth had been more steady, a lot of the nervousness about the online economy may not exist.

Here are the stats:

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 22, 2008

Holiday E-Commerce Sales Flat Overall According to Latest comScore Data

With the economy in the pooper and 5 fewer holiday shopping days than last year, the latest data from comScore will show whether you're a half glass full or half glass empty kind of person.

As the 2008 holiday shopping season draws to a close, online sales are trending flat for the year.

If you look at just Thanksgiving through December 19th, and remember, there were five fewer days in 2008, sales were up 5%. I'm half glass full, so I'm loving that number:

Cyber Monday wasn't the top online shopping day of the year, either. It came in third:

Here's our journey up to this point: Holiday E-Commerce Update: Spending Flat Last Week (12/15/08) Holiday E-Commerce Spending Up 7% Year-Over-Year Last Week (12/10/08) Online Black Friday Sales Up 1% Over Last Year (12/1/08) Preparing for the Worst: Bad Online Economic Data Just in Time for Black Friday (11/26/08)

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Google, AOL Gain While Yahoo, Microsoft, and Ask.com Lose Share in comScore's November 2008 Rankings

comScore's November 2008 search engine rankings are out and Google remains at the top, gaining on its share while AOL is the only other one to make gains, albeit slight, month-over-month.

November's searches were down 3% from October, likely due to the elections being held at the beginning of the month. But unfortunately, the decline corresponds with online retail sales for the month.

By the way, YouTube is still giving Yahoo a run for its money:

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 7:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 15, 2008

Holiday E-Commerce Update: Spending Flat Last Week

comScore has been providing weekly updates on holiday e-commerce spending and the reports have been like a roller coaster.

First, we started down, with November spending down 4% over last year. Then we took a gentle climb on Black Friday (1% increase) followed by a steeper incline on Cyber Monday, which saw sales rise 15% over last year. The week that started with Cyber Monday had an overall lift of 7%.

But what goes up must come down, with last week's sales falling flat year-over-year.

Looking at the glass half full, considering last week's downright awful economic news, it's almost a miracle the sales were flat instead of down. Unemployment increased and a $50 billion ponzi scheme was exposed. (Those unemployment numbers didn't even include the thousands of layoffs announced/performed last week.)

It's starting to get a bit late to have anything ordered online delivered to your door, so if you're looking to stay in the game, you might want to consider expedited shipping offers. Or if you have brick and mortar stores, drive foot traffic through the doors with printable coupons or mobile coupons if you're especially awesome.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 10, 2008

Holiday E-Commerce Spending Up 7% Year-Over-Year Last Week

It seems as time goes by and concerns over the economy get worse, tracking the economy becomes more frequent and dare I say micro.

Thankfully, I have good news to report. E-commerce spending last week was up 7% year-over-year, according to comScore.

Even better news is that the gains from Black Friday, Cyber Monday and last week have made up for the 4% drop in sales for most of November which marked the beginning of the holiday shopping season.

There is a caveat for some of you search marketers, however. Many advertising budgets are shifting dollars towards paid search - possibly making e-commerce more competitive and ad bid prices higher.

Another thing e-tailers are using are incentives, such as free shipping, and coupons. They're using them because they work. All of this can cut into your margins, but perhaps not as bad as missing out on sales altogether.

This holiday may have to be the most fluid and flexible one in recent memory for search marketers. Keep an eye on your analytics and on your paid search accounts. Don't assume the ad that was there yesterday is working fine and dandy today. Vigilance is the name of the game in this volatile economy.

Tell us what you're seeing in your industry and niche by leaving a comment!

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 1:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 3, 2008

Cyber Monday Spending Up 15% to $846 Million

Cyber Monday sales were up 15% reaching $846 million, making it the second highest online spending day recorded, according to comScore.

Earlier this week, comScore said that rate of growth for Cyber Monday sales have traditionally indicated the overall rate of growth for holiday spending in general. If that remains the case this year, that's good news. While the rate has certainly declined, it is still growing.

Here's a look at historical weekly online sales during the holidays:

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 1, 2008

Online Black Friday Sales Up 1% Over Last Year

Despite all the bad economic news going into Black Friday, online spending was up 1% over last year, according to comScore. Online shoppers spent $534 million, up from $531 million for Black Friday 2007.

One of the advantages for online shopping is sleeping in (and not trampling Wal-mart employees to death). Online spending peaked between 12-4pm with the 8am to 12pm slot following closely behind:

However, it's today's sales that may be the strongest indicator of the overall season. Cyber Monday growth rates are strongly correlated to the growth rate of the full holiday season.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 8:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

November 26, 2008

Google's Gains Continue in comScore's October 2008 Rankings

The year-over-year gains for Google that we saw in Nielsen Online's October 2008 search engine rankings were mirrored in comScore's rankings for the same month.

Google enjoyed a nice 63.1% share, up from 58.5% during the same time last year. Yahoo was at 20.5% down from 22.9%> Microsoft was at 8.5%, down from 9.7%.

There was one major difference between Nielsen and comScore. Nielsen said the number of searches declined, while comparing comScore's October 2008 data to its 2007 data shows that the number of searches increased to 12.6 million billion up from 10.5 million billion.

Check out the rest of the data here:

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 1:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

November 18, 2008

E-commerce Growth Slows to Just 1% in October 2008

E-commerce growth slowed to just 1% last month, according to comScore. This is the lowest rate since comScore began culling the data in 2001.

Let's just rip this bandaid off (more like ripping your heart out) with the raw data. Here are the growth rates for every month, beginning in June 2007 and ending October 2008.

For the visually-inclined:

After you're done throwing things against the wall and cursing at your screen, feel free to leave a comment.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

September 19, 2008

Google Searches at 63% of the Search Market for August 2008

comScore has released their search market data for August 2008. Google saw 63% of the 11.7 billion core searches conducted in the U.S. during the late summer month. The number of core searches barely changed from July to August, so Google's 1.1% rise over July 2008 certainly stole a little share from someone else.

Or rather, two someone elses. Both Microsoft and Yahoo took the hit, while Ask and AOL also added a bit of market share.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 8:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 10, 2008

YouTube Dominates July 2008 Online Video Rankings with 5 Billion Views

Over 5 billion video views occurred on YouTube in July 2008, according to new data supplied by comScore. That gave Google Sites a whopping 44% of the video market in the U.S. In a distant second is Fox Interactive's MySpace with 3.9% of the market and 446 million videos watched.

142 million, or 75%, of internet users watched online videos in July. The average number of videos watched per viewer is 80.

92 million of those viewers hung out at YouTube, consuming an average of 54.7 videos. 54 million absorbed video content at MySpace, at an average of 8.1 videos.

Here are the charts for the complete picture of the top 10 sites:

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

September 4, 2008

Obama v. McCain in Online Display Ads, Video Views, and Searches

After two weeks of political conventions, comScore is releasing data regarding activity for the candidates of the two major political parties in the U.S.

comScore has analyzed the online display ad views, website video views, and searches conducted for Senators John McCain and Barack Obama.

Obama leads McCain in online display ad spending and searches conducted. McCain may want to look into competing better in online display ads - if they're working for the Senator from Illinois, something perhaps only his campaign knows. Both numbers probably speaks to Obama being less known as well as his popularity over McCain, which has been demonstrated in the polls.

McCain did begin outspending Obama in search advertising in May and June. Subsequently, the race tightened according to polls. Google has attributed both candidates' primary wins to their search advertising spends.

Here's are the charts from today's comScore release:

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

August 27, 2008

Microsoft Top Display Advertiser for June 2008

comScore has released display ad data for June 2008. Microsoft was the top display advertiser, while Fox Interactive Media, with its ownership of MySpace, was the top publisher.

180 million unique visitors were exposed to display ads in June. On the publisher side, Yahoo reached 130,680,000 and Fox reached 83,714,000. On the advertiser side, Microsoft reached 126,367,000 of them. Ask Networks advertised to 102,565,000, coming in as the 10th top display advertiser.

Here are the charts:

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 22, 2008

Google Tops comScore Search Engine Rankings for July 2008

Google increased their market share of searches by 0.4% in July, coming in at 61.9%, according to comScore. That gain came at Yahoo's expense, who dropped 0.4% to 21.5%. Microsoft also dropped 0.3% to 8.9%. Both Ask and AOL picked up that gain. Here's the data:

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 5, 2008

Google and Microsoft Gain in UK Search Engine Shares for June 2008

comScore has released UK search engine share data for June 2008. Here's how it breaks down:

Other notable findings from June 2008:

There were 3.9 billion total searches conducted in the U.K. during the month.
31 million U.K. Internet users conducted at least one search.
U.K. searchers conducted an average of 124 searches per searcher during the month, or 4.1 searches per day.
U.K. searchers made a combined total of 937 billion visits to a search engine in May, with an average of 4.1 searches per visit.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 8:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

August 1, 2008

comScore: No Clients are Leaving Us for Google

During their conference call announcing second quarter results, comScore addressed whether or not a new Google research product is impacting their business. Google announced their new media measurement tool, Ad Planner, in late June. So far, the program is open by invitation only (though companies can apply for an invite).

comScore CEO Magid Abraham said, "We really haven't seen an impact so far on our business, we haven't heard any client who's said well use [the Google product] instead of comScore," according to Marketwatch.

A conflict with comScore's data doesn't seem to be hurting the measurement company either. Earlier this year, analysts used comScore's search advertising numbers, showing a decline for Google, to underestimate the search giant for the first quarter of 2008. But Google beat Wall Street in Q1. Google says that the improved quality of their ad product decreased clicks but improved revenues.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 21, 2008

comScore and Nielsen Release Search Market Data for June 2008

comScore and Nielsen have released their search market data for June 2008. comScore gives insight into month-over-month growth while Nielsen's report shows year-over-year growth. Let's look at comScore's data first.

Google dropped by .3% from May 2008 to reach 61.5% of the search market for June. Yahoo gained that .3% to rise to 20.9% for June. Microsoft gained .7% to 9.2%, while Ask.com and AOL dropped .2% and .4% respectively. Here's a handy chart:

Taking a look at the number of searches conducted, Google sites saw over 7 billion searches, Yahoo saw 2.4 billion and Microsoft saw 1 billion. Americans conducted a total of 11.5 billion searches, up 7% from may.

Nielsen's data has Google seeing 59% of the search market, up 19% from the year before. Yahoo is at 16.6%, down 12.4% year-over-year, while Microsoft is at 14.1%, up 12.5% over June 2007. AOL was down 17% to 4.3%, and Ask.com was up 4.9% to 2.0%.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 20, 2008

Is YouTube about to pass Yahoo in expanded searches?

On Friday, comScore announced that Google retained its lead in the U.S. core search market capturing 61.5 percent of the searches conducted in June 2008. By and large, the press coverage focused on the fact that Google's share of core searches was down slightly from May, while Yahoo! and Microsoft's share of core searches were up slightly from the previous month.

But, farther down the comScore press release was data on the "expanded search queries" for June. This includes the top properties where search activity is observed -- like YouTube. And here's what comScore qSearch 2.0 found: -- 7.3 billion expanded search queries were conducted at Google in June; -- 2.5 billion expanded search queries were conducted at Yahoo that month; -- 2.3 billion expanded search queries were conducted at YouTube and other Google sites; -- 1.1 billion expanded search queries were conducted at MSN-Windows Live.

And the month to month growth of expanded search queries at YouTube was 15%, while it was 8% at Yahoo!

So, let the countdown begin. How many months do you think it will take before YouTube passes Yahoo!?

According to comScore Video Metrix, 82.2 million viewers watched 4.1 billion videos in May on YouTube.com -- that's an average of 50.4 videos per viewer. It's also worth noting that YouTube.com accounts for more than 98 percent of all videos viewed at Google Sites, whic h means that Google Video is now round off error.

Okay, to be fair, expanded searches includes ones for mapping and local directories as well as user-generated video sites. So, YouTube and Google Maps are being combined in the comScore data.

Nevertheless, the media world still seems focused on core searches, which doesn't count about 5.1 billion expanded searches a month.

So, it's important to remember that vertical search engines are ... search engines, too. And getting found in all the right places increasingly means optimizing video for YouTube as well as web pages for Google, Yahoo! Search and Live Search.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 12:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

July 14, 2008

Americans Watched 12 Billion Videos Online in May

comScore today reported that U.S. Internet users viewed more than 12 billion online videos during May 2008, a 45 percent increase from a year ago.

Google Sites ranked as the top U.S. video property that month with 4.2 billion videos viewed (representing a 35 percent share of all videos viewed). YouTube.com accounted for more than 98 percent of all videos viewed at the property, making Google Video less popular than Hulu.com, a joint venture of NBC and Fox, which debuted in the 10th position with 88 million videos being viewed (0.7 percent).

Fox Interactive Media ranked second with 778 million videos (6.4 percent). Yahoo! Sites ranked third with 347 million (2.9 percent), followed by Microsoft Sites with 246 million (2.0 percent).

According to comScore, nearly 142 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 85 videos per viewer in May. Google Sites also attracted the most viewers (83.8 million), who watched an average of 50 videos per person. Fox Interactive attracted the second most viewers (60.8 million), followed by Yahoo! Sites (40.2 million) and Microsoft Sites (29.5 million).

Other notable findings include: -- 74 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video. -- The average online video viewer watched 228 minutes of video. -- 82.2 million viewers watched 4.1 billion videos on YouTube.com (50.4 videos per viewer). -- 54.8 million viewers watched 703 million videos on MySpace.com (12.8 videos per viewer). -- 6.8 million viewers watched 88 million videos on Hulu.com (13.0 videos per viewer). -- The duration of the average online video was 2.7 minutes.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 5:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 20, 2008

comScore May 2008 Search Engine Rankings Data is Out

comScore has released their May 2008 U.S. Search Engine Rankings and no major changes have occurred. Google sites came in first, at 61.8% up .2% from April. Yahoo and Ask also saw .2% gains, and they came at the expense of Microsoft and AOL, which suffered .6% loss and .1% decline respectively.

10.8 billion searches were conducted in May, a 2% increase over April. Google sites saw 6.7 billion of those searches while Yahoo saw 2.2 billion. Microsoft sites saw 920 million searches on their sites. Check out the charts below for a breakdown of the data.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

May 29, 2008

comScore Acquires M:Metrics

comScore has acquired mobile measurement company M:Metrics. The acquisition will include three measurement products:

MobiLens is a syndicated monthly online survey that captures overall mobile phone usage of a representative sample of more than 40,000 mobile device users.

MeterDirect is an on-device meter that passively measures the mobile Internet behavior and media consumption of more than 4,000 existing Smartphone panelists on more than 280 device models.

M:Ad is a mobile ad tracking service that continuously monitors clickable display advertising.

“With the substantial growth of 3G devices and Internet friendly handsets, we believe we are now at an inflection point in Internet usage on mobile devices,” said Dr. Magid Abraham, comScore's president and chief executive officer. “Our acquisition of M:Metrics makes comScore an immediate market leader in this space and positions comScore to deliver significant shareholder value as wireless carriers, telecom equipment providers, media companies, advertising agencies, online publishers, and marketers extend their reach into the mobile Internet world.”

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 22, 2008

Google Sees Search Share Growth in April, Others Decline

Google was the only one of the "big" search engines to experience month-over-month growth in April 2008, according to U.S. search engine rankings released by comScore. Overall, searches by Americans declined by 2%. Core search engines received 10.6 billion of the total searches, with Google seeing over 6.5 billion, Yahoo 2.2 billion and Microsoft 961 million. Here's the stats:

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

May 15, 2008

ComScore Places Google Sites Ahead of Yahoo Sites for First Time

While Google has dominated the search market, it's Yahoo that's been the leader as a destination site (think email, photos, etc.), according to published reports. But the tide is turning in that field, as comScore reported Google sites finally overtook Yahoo sites in the month of April.

But unlike its lead in search, this lead is a slight one. Only 466,000 visitors separate the #1 and #2 slots in this field. Here's the raw data for April:

Google sites saw 141.1 million visitors, up 18% year over year. Yahoo sites saw 140.6 million visitors, up 7% year over year. Microsoft trailed in third at 121 million.

Yahoo does still lead in page views, meaning either people are returning or are more engaged in Yahoo content. Yahoo had 33.6 billion page views while Google saw 28.7 billion page views.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 8:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

May 7, 2008

Google Sees 79% European Market Share in March 2008

So many Europeans use Google for search, you have to wonder if they know that other search engines exist. A whopping 79% of searches were conducted on Google in the month of March, according to comScore. That amounts to 19 billion. No wonder European regulators are so wary of a Googleopoly.

Coming in second was eBay with 3.1% followed by Russian search engine Yandex with 2.2%. Yahoo came in fourth at 2.0% with Microsoft rounding out the top 5 at 1.9%.

Google's overwhelming dominance didn't prevent the EU from approving its acquisition of DoubleClick earlier this year.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:33 AM | Permalink

April 10, 2008

comScore launches Video Metrix in Canada, France, Germany and UK

comScore today announced the availability of comScore Video Metrix in four new markets: Canada, France, Germany and the UK. comScore Video Metrix, which was first launched in the US more than two years ago, now provides online video measurement across all five of these countries.

This enables search engine marketers "to better plan advertising to a highly-engaged, but often elusive audience, that typically spends less time with traditional media,” Jack Flanagan, executive vice president of comScore, said in a press release.

Of interest to search engine marketers planning to attend SES Toronto, comScore found that Canada has the heaviest online video viewing activity.

Of the five countries currently reported by comScore Video Metrix, online video had the highest reach in Canada, where 19 million viewers viewed a video online in December, representing 89 percent of the total online population age 15 and older. The UK was next with an 87 percent reach, followed by France with an 84 percent reach and Germany with an 81 percent reach. Penetration was slightly lower in the US, where online video reached 78 percent of the total online population.

Canada's online video audience also viewed more videos than any of the other reported countries, averaging 112 videos per viewer for the month of December, followed by the UK with 108 videos per viewer, Germany with 92 videos per viewer, and France with 89 videos per viewer. Again, US activity was slightly lower, averaging 77 videos per viewer in December.

Driven largely by video viewership at YouTube, Google Sites led as the most popular online video destination in all reported countries. However, beyond this there were strong performances from key local players, with BBC Sites ranked second in the UK, DailyMotion.com ranked second in France, and Vivendi ranked second in Germany. Microsoft Sites was amongst the top 5 ranked video sites in the US, UK and Canada, but not in France and Germany.

Many search engine marketers have started creating online video on a much larger scale this year.

For example, the Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo channel on YouTube now has more than 80 video interviews with speakers and exhibitors posted from SES London and SES New York 2008. Combined, they've received 10,932 views across all the videos as of this morning.

The most popular video in the SES channel is my interview with Nick Carr, the author of "The Big Switch," conducted before his keynote presentation at SES London.

The Big Switch by Nick Carr -- SES London 2008

And more video interviews are planned for SES Toronto 2008. So, stay tuned. Don't touch that dial. Film at 11.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 10:19 AM | Permalink

March 5, 2008

SEW Experts: The Beginning of the End? Or the End of the Beginning?

ComScore's recent data showing flat paid search growth for Google led many in the media to declare that the paid search sky was falling. But the rush to judgment was wrong, and there are other factors involved. In today's Searching for Meaning column, "The Beginning of the End? Or the End of the Beginning?," Kevin Ryan outlines the saga of misread numbers, media's desire to show failure that isn't there, and the fickleness of financial markets.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

November 28, 2007

SEW Experts: Understanding the Global Search Marketplace - Part 2

Searches are up all over the world, and it's an interesting juxtaposition to think of the rest of the world as "emerging" compared to North America and Europe. In today's Searching for Meaning column, "Understanding the Global Search Marketplace - Part 2," Kevin Ryan looks at some global search data provided by comScore to see if any search provider is staking a claim to the title of global search leader.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

November 14, 2007

SEW Experts: Understanding the Global Search Marketplace - Part 1

The search world is expanding. Global players like Google, Yahoo, Baidu and Microsoft are competing to be the single resource for accessing information. In today's Searching for Meaning column, "Understanding the Global Search Marketplace - Part 1," Kevin Ryan begins an exploration of global search marketing, with some exclusive comScore data.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

October 4, 2007

ComScore Launches Search Marketing Intelligence Service

Market research firm comScore has launched a search marketing-specific intelligence service, comScore Marketer. Using data collected from comScore's panel of more than 2 million consumers, the service can offer search marketers insight into their own visitors, as well as their competitors and partners.

"We have this rich base of panelists where we pick up online behavior, and we pick up search behavior too," said Dan Lackner, senior VP at comScore. "It made sense to harvest the data we collect to help our customers allocate their marketing dollars more efficiently."

ComScore Marketer is a subscription service, with data updated monthly. It presents the marketer with site-specific data, such as traffic and keyword referral data, as well as comparisons within a site category or among competitors' sites.

It also presents visitor data based on the search query, identifying other sites and categories frequented by others who typed in that query. That information will allow a marketer to find other sites to consider for advertising to increase their reach, or excluding sites that are being overexposed to control frequency, said Steve Dennen, comScore's senior director of market research.

"Over the last six to nine months, there's been a movement in the industry to get search out of the silo, and make it work together with other advertising," Dennen said. "This lets them reach people at different touchpoints, and find other places to reach similar people."

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 10:37 AM | Permalink

August 1, 2007

New Yahoo! comScore Study on Shopping Behavior

The Yahoo! comScore study released this week reaffirms that shoppers who pre-shop products on the Web in fact purchase more at off-line stores. The study, which was designed to identify whether of search and display advertising had an impact on in-store sales was conducted during April 2006 to January 2007. This large study involved a sample of more than 175,000 comScore panelists and five major retailers including major national department stores, a major apparel retailer and a major supplier of office products. The study used behaviorally and demographically similar panels to compare the purchasing behavior of those exposed to online advertising with the behavior of those who were not exposed.

The results showed that consumers exposed to online advertising tend to research or ‘pre-shop' products online prior to purchase. This behavior ultimately leads to increased in-store sales. The study also found that ‘pre-shoppers' spend an average of 41 percent more in-store when compared to consumers not exposed to online advertising.

To those familiar with current retail shopping behaviors or tracking the growth of online retailing will not find these findings surprising. Although online sales continue to grow, they remain just a fraction of in-store retail sales; however, exposure to online advertising has increased dramatically. Logically, exposure to this volume of advertising has to have an impact, but the impact's dimensions were not spelled out previously.

The Yahoo! and comScore study showed that:

Exposure to online advertising resulted in increased consumer engagement resulting in consumers viewing an average of six more pages during the period in which they were researching compared to those not exposed to advertising.

Incremental sales occur off-line with almost 90 percent of the incremental sales generated by online advertising taking place in-store:

Consumers exposed to online advertising spent an incremental six dollars in-store for every one dollar spent online.

Integrated search and display campaigns create maximum impact leading to deeper consumer engagement and increased sales.

As the use of the Web and familiarity with search advertising has grown, search and online display ads are fulfilling a demand generation function similar to what used to occur with other media. For search marketers this study presents a strong case for using search ads in combination with display campaigns. The study also strongly highlights the need for more thorough online to offline results tracking so that demand generation is accurately sourced and the lift in store sales generated by these online efforts can be quantified and their value accurately assessed.

Posted by Amanda Watlington at 12:25 PM | Permalink

June 12, 2007

Younger Folks Like Ads More

Surprise, surprise. As an advertiser, you probably believe that Gen X/Yers are too savvy to be swayed by the singing Alka Seltzer tablet of days gone by. You think twice about going into unbridled territory, such as user-generated content (UGC) sites, with a purely corporate agenda. Well, don't worry so much about advertising on MySpace, YouTube, Facebook and others anymore.

It turns out that 18-34 year olds are not as opposed to being sold to as we all thought. According to ComScore, younger consumers are noticeably more receptive than their counterparts to all kinds of advertising on UGC sites.

Here's how much more than other age groups:

I am Receptive: 41% (18-34) versus 30% (35-54) and 23% (55+) Advertising is Trustworthy: 28% (18-34) versus 22% (35-54) and 17% (55+) Advertising is Useful: 40% (18-34) versus 33% (35-54) and 28% (55+)

These younger consumers trust advertising in certain categories more than others. Not surprisingly, some 66% polled are receptive to entertainment ads. Other categories like apparel, food, electronics, travel, telecom and autos do well too. However “higher trust” areas like financial services and drugs are not well-received here.

This is just the beginning, since UGC sites are far from the chief attention-grabbing medium. That award still goes to TV, where 85% notice commercials. Over half notice ads on news/media or corporate sites, while only 28% pay any attention on UGC sites. Yet these findings amaze me – we are seeing a big shift in attitudes.

Posted by at 12:04 AM | Permalink

March 21, 2007

February Share of Search Numbers Are In

February share-of-searches numbers are in from comScore and Nielsen//NetRatings, with Google widening its lead over Yahoo once again, though the two had different findings for the direction of Yahoo's share. Microsoft came in third while losing share.

According to Nielsen//NetRatings, 55.8% of searches were done on Google last month, a gain of 7.3 percentage points over last year. Meanwhile, comScore attributes 48.1% share to Google, a 5.9-point change from February 2006.

For Yahoo, Nielsen//NetRatings pegs its share at 20.7%, a 1.8-point loss; while comScore shows 28.1%, a 0.6-point year-to-year gain.

Microsoft comes in third, with 9.6% share, down 1.1 points, according to Nielsen//NetRatings; and 10.5% share according to comScore, a 2.9-point decline over February 2006.

Ask maintains its position in fourth place, according to comScore, with 5.0% share, a 1.0-point decline. Nielsen//NetRatings has AOL in fourth, with 5.1% share of searches, with Ask at 2.0%

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 3:33 PM | Permalink

February 2, 2007

ComScore, FM Team Up for Analytics Research

ComScore Networks has teamed up with John Battelle's Federated Media (FM) Publishing for a research and development initiative to come up with a way to measure audiences of blogs and community-driven sites. As part of the research, comScore will build a database using a customized weighting and projection system, which is intended to more accurately measure audience size and demographics that have previously been available from comScore only for larger sites.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 8:07 PM | Permalink

January 16, 2007

comScore Reports December Search Market Share

In addition to Compete's report, we have comScore's December qSearch analysis of U.S. search market share.

Google grew its lead slightly to 47.3 percent, up 0.4 percentage points over November. Yahoo gained three points to 28.5 percent market share. Microsoft sites (including MSN Search and Live Search) dipped by 0.5 points to 10.5 percent share; Ask.com and related IAC sites, like Excite and MyWay, lost 0.1 point to keep fourth place with 5.4 percent share; and AOL and the Time Warner network remain in fifth place with 4.9 percent market share, down 0.2 points in December.

All the engines basically continue on the same trends -- Google slightly up, Microsoft slightly down, and Yahoo, Ask and AOL fairly flat. The trends are especially apparent if you look with a long view, as Danny did at Search Engine Land.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 11:45 AM | Permalink

December 27, 2006

Page Views -- Losing Its Front-Runner Status

When discussing site traffic, you always hear about Unique Visitors or Page Views. Although actual numbers are endlessly debated, these metrics are treated as the lingua franca among publishers and advertisers. Yet even these stalwarts change, and page views will lose its front-runner status during 2007. It's about time.

Even comScore says page views are not enough. They are planning to incorporate the missing consumption of dynamic content. In last week's press release, CEO Magid Abraham announced "enhanced metrics of user engagement and advertising exposure" next year. He explained the need to reflect "new technologies such as AJAX - which enable real-time site updates without needing to refresh a page."

What will replace or enhance page views? No word yet. There's an opportunity to get this right, not only calculations but also industry-wide acceptance. Micro Persuasion believes that suppliers should start thinking small, as marketers focus on the "influence circles within the niches that matter to them." Yet the big ad buyers will not evaporate, and also require ongoing support.

Some "pages-plus" metric is overdue, one that captures unique content and ad views. It needs to be something that's projected and tracked by everyone. Its biases must be explained and at least partially understood. Finally, it should become the new denominator for calculating effective RPMs, which means it will have to be lingua franca again.

A lot is riding on this metric, and I look forward to the debate.

Posted by at 12:44 PM | 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

October 13, 2006

Consumer Satisfaction Doesn't Equal Market Share

Earlier this week J.D. Power and Associates released the findings of its "2006 Residential Online Service Customer Satisfaction Study." The study, based on a survey of more than 10,000 U.S. residential Internet users, found that Yahoo Messenger ranked the highest among IM clients and that – and this is something of a surprise – InfoSpace's Dogpile had the highest rankings among search engines.

Here are the rankings of IM clients in terms of customer satisfaction:

1. Yahoo! Messenger 2. MSN Messenger 3. Windows Messenger 4. Instant Message Average 5. Google Talk 6. Trillian 7. AIM/AOL Instant Messenger

Compare that to U.S. IM market share (per Nielsen//Netratings):

1. AOL 2. MSN 3. Yahoo 4. Google

The J.D. Power report also said that U.S. residential IM usage was flat vs. 2005, at 36%. Yet the survey found that "among customers who report using IM on a regular or occasional basis, nearly 70 percent report that to some degree, instant messaging has replaced the use of traditional telephones." There are implications here for traditional telephony that are striking and worth further exploration.

Probably more interesting to readers of this blog are the search-engine findings. The survey reported that 75% of residential Internet subscribers used multiple search engines.

Here's the market-share breakdown that J.D. Power found:

1. Google: 51% (up 8 points from 2005) 2. Yahoo: 17% (down 4 points) 3. AOL: 9% (down 1 point)

The release doesn't report on the respective shares of Ask or MSN/Windows Live. Presumably they constitute the remaining 23% of usage or something approaching that.

Compare comScore August search market share data:

1. Google Sites: 44% 2. Yahoo: 28.7% 3. MSN: 12.5% 4. AOL: 5.6% 5. Ask: 5.5%

Here are the J.D. Power survey's customer satisfaction findings. Little used Dogpile was ranked number one:

1. Dogpile 2. Ask.com 3. Google 4. Yahoo! Search 5. AOL Search 6. MSN Search 7. Internet Explorer (treated as a search engine in the survey)

I don't have any insight into the survey methodology so we have to take the results at face value. But 10,000+ respondents is a very large sample. A disconnect is the difference between search engine market share and the satisfaction ratings. Based on these findings one would think that if Ask and (especially) Dogpile could gain broader awareness and visibility they might be able to gain some share.

Posted by Greg Sterling at 11:19 AM | Permalink

October 6, 2006

MySpace: Not Just For The Under 30 Crowd

As a kind of twist on that old 60's mantra, social networking's slogan might have been: not for anyone over 30 -- or so we thought. As is being widely covered, comScore reported and MySpace apparently confirmed that the average age of its users is going up. More than 50% of its users in August were over 35. This represents a kind of mainstreaming of social networking in one way of looking at it. MySpace, as you remember, has a deal with Google in which the latter will pay a guaranteed $900 million over a three-year period to be the search and paid search provider on the site.

Posted by Greg Sterling at 11:42 AM | Permalink

October 3, 2006

vFlyer Seeks To Overcome Classifieds Fragmentation For Sellers

From a marketer's point of view, one of the undesirable characteristics of the Internet in general and the local Internet in particular is audience fragmentation. Like other segments in local, classifieds are growing -- dramatically according to comScore (99% year over year). The firm also shows 37.4 million users in July to 10 high-traffic "classifieds" sites. But, in reality, there are many millions more users going to sites not part of comScore's segmentation that fall within the top three traditional newspaper "classifieds" categories -- Jobs, Cars, Real Estate.

Craigslist has become the 800-pound gorilla in online classifieds. But there are many more sites out there that are meaningful in terms of traffic and value delivered to sellers. Reaching this disaggregated market can be time consuming and challenging.

A new site and service from a company called vFlyer seeks to provide tools and distribution to create better-looking ads, using pre-designed but customizable templates and one-click distribution to a broad range of sites (including Craigslist) -- all free to sellers.

Each templated ad has a unique URL and is being optimized for SEO. So, effectively, these are microsites or landing pages for search distribution too. The business model isn't fully baked, but largely based on advertising although premium services may be offered. Postlets is a competitor.

Here's more on the company from the NY Times.

Posted by Greg Sterling at 2:40 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 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?

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.

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

May 26, 2006

NetRatings: Google Tops 50 Percent Mark In US Web Searches

New stats (PDF) out from NetRatings show Google now handles half the web searches in the United States:

Search Engine April 2005 April 2006 Google 47% 50% Yahoo 22% 22% MSN 12% 11%

Need a longer view? See our NetRatings page for stats over time. I'll be getting the missing months posted soon, promise. I'm also planning a side-by-side against comScore figures. The latest of those released earlier this week show Google with a smaller chunk of the search pie but still higher than others. Here's a fast side-by-side:

April 2006 comScore NetRatings Google 43% 50% Yahoo 28% 22% MSN 13% 11%

Historical comScore figures are on our comScore page, fresh through March 2006.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:07 AM | Permalink

May 22, 2006

Google Continues To Gain Market Share While Others Lose

comScore released their latest stats on the "Share of Online Searches by Engine". Google gained April 2005 to April 2006 6.6 percentage points, claiming 43.1%, up from 42.7% March 2006. Yahoo with 28.0% in April 2006, dropped 2.7 percentage points from April 2005, but remained flat from March 2006 to April 2006 with 28% share. MSN dropped 3.2 percentage points claiming 12.9%, and also saw a decline from March 2006 to April 2006 by .3%. What is a bit surprising is that Ask.com's share also decreased both from April 2005 with 6.1% to March 2006 with 5.9% and then in April 2006 declining once again by .1% to 5.8% market share.

Ask.com has been doing a blitz of TV commercials, which should have increased their share from Mach to April. Maybe the newer campaigns will have a bigger impact? I will ask Danny Sullivan to possibly dig deeper into these numbers, later in the week.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 2:30 PM | Permalink

April 25, 2006

Yahoo's Ad Inventory Beats Out Google

Susan Kuchinskas informed me of this post that shows recent comScore qSearch stats where Yahoo's ad inventory is higher as a percentage, when compared to Google. Yahoo shows a PPC ad for 59.7 percent of Web searches conducted. Google shows a PPC ad for 52.9 percent of Web searches. Google still has a higher click through rate with 11.8 percent but Yahoo is not far behind with 11.4 percent. Keep in mind, I know Danny hates comparing month to month, and these numbers are comparing March 2006 vs. March 2005.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:14 AM | Permalink

April 19, 2006

Revenues Up, Profits Down But Yahoo Meets Earnings Expectations

Yahoo reported a 22 percent drop in first quarter profits but met the expected earnings forecast. Yahoo profit slumps 22% in quarter from the New York Times has more details on yesterday's earnings call. Search and branding advertising revenue (sadly, they get lumped together) rose 35 percent.

Yahoo also said it had a 15 to 20 percent gain in search queries in the quarter, to counter stats from comScore showing Yahoo is losing share. There's some spin here I'll explore more later this week, when I do my stats review.

The short answer is this. Query growth is up across the board, comScore says. So sure, Yahoo will have a gain in NUMBER of queries. But the share of overall queries, according to comScore, has dropped. If that share had stayed steady, then query growth would have been even more.

Note that in a fast look I did at the latest NetRatings figures (older ones here), Yahoo's actually still looking pretty steady even in recent months. Again, I'll have more on that soon.

Some other coverage:

Yahoo profit slides 22% Stock climbs 6% after Net company declares optimism: San Francisco Chronicle
Yahoo results meet expectations, ads seen solid: Reuters
1st-quarter revenue up 34% at Yahoo, but profit falls 22%: San Jose Mercury News
Yahoo profit drops, matches forecasts: MarketWatch
Yahoo! Makes Numbers, Reveals Search, Streaming Plans: ClickZ

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:21 AM | Permalink

April 18, 2006

comScore: Google Leads On March 2006 US Search Share

You may have seen some rumblings a couple of weeks ago about Google being up in search traffic compared to competitors, based on comScore figures. I'm going to do a big drill down on that later this week, bringing in some NetRatings and Hitwise figures as well. But more comScore figures have just arrived for March, so here they are:

Share of Online Searches US Home, Work & University Users

Search Network March 2005 March 2006 Change Google 36.4% 42.7% +6.3% Yahoo 30.6% 28.0% -2.6% MSN/Microsoft 16.5% 13.2% -3.3% AOL/Time Warner 8.9% 7.6% -1.4% Ask 5.5% 5.9% +0.4%

Other notes from the comScore release:

Americans conducted 6.4 billion searches online in March, up 10 percent from last month and 15 percent from last year. The increase in search queries from the previous month marked the largest gain over the past twelve months.
Google Sites led the pack with 2.7 billion search queries performed, followed by Yahoo Sites (1.8 billion), MSN-Microsoft (849 million), Time-Warner Network (486 million), and Ask Jeeves/Ask Network (376 million).
The toolbar search market continues to be dominated by Google and Yahoo!, which combined for more than 95 percent of toolbar searches in March. Google led the way with 48.9 percent, while Yahoo! captured 46.5 percent.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:31 AM | Permalink

November 20, 2005

Search Overtaking Email as Most Popular Online Activity

New research from Pew Internet & American Life tracking surveys and consumer behavior trends from the comScore Media Metrix consumer panel show that about 60 million American adults are using search engines on a typical day. This is a big jump from last year, from 30% to 41% of the internet-using population searching every day. If these trends continue, the use of search engines may well overtake email as the primary internet activity in our daily online lives.

I plan to take a closer look at the report later in the week; if you can wait, a summary and link to the full PDF report are available on this page.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 6:17 PM | Permalink

November 8, 2005

Why We Use Various Search Engines

InternetRetailer has done some nice charts off of a Majestic Research/comScore report looking at why we use particular search engines (for Google, it's the results; for others, it's because you're doing other things). The stats also look at awareness of paid links and tolerance of demographic and behavior targeting. Here's a summary:

For the question of why people use particular search engines, top reasons for each major service were:

Google: 68 percent say it's because it has the best results.
AOL: 65 percent say it's because they are doing other things at AOL, like checking mail and other non-search activities.
MSN: 63 percent say it's just like AOL, because they are doing other things there.
Yahoo: 52 percent say it's just like AOL, because they are doing other things there. Yahoo got the second highest marks for having the best results after Google, with 33 percent choosing that reason.

The report found that AOL and Google users were the most likely to notice sponsored links (82 and 81 percent, respectively) while MSN users were the least likely to notice them (69 percent).

As for privacy, 58 percent said they weren't worried about being demographically or behaviorally targeted as long as it was disclosed and they could opt out. And 27 percent said they'd keep using a search engine even if they couldn't opt out.

Haven't tracked down the actual report yet; will postscript, if I can find it.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:11 PM | Permalink

August 23, 2005

Google Top Search Engine In July 2005; Toolbar-Based Queries Grow & Yahoo Tops There

I've posted the latest comScore search engine ratings for July 2005 on our comScore Media Metrix Search Engine Ratings page. As is usual, Google is the top ranked search engine in the US, based on the share of those searching at the site for the US. Google came in with a 36.5 percent share, followed by Yahoo at 30.5, then MSN at 15.5. Full details on our other page.

That page also looks at how things have changed over the past few months. AOL and Ask Jeeves have both shown some interesting growth patterns.

comScore also released some limited stats about search toolbars driving queries:

In July 2005, 11 percent of all US searches were done using toolbars, up from 8 percent the year before.
Yahoo had the most popular toolbar, handling 51 percent of all toolbar-based search queries.
Yahoo processed 282 million queries via the toolbar last month

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:52 AM | Permalink

April 26, 2005

The Search Landscape: The View from 30,000 Feet

A popular notion says that Google dominates the web search arena, but does it really? It depends on who you ask. The company is clearly a powerhouse, but other players are also strong, and really shine when you narrow the view to consider specific regions or countries, the preferences of particular demographic groups and other measurement factors.

In today's SearchDay article, Viewing the Search Landscape, guest writer Andrew Goodman offers his perspective on a panel at a recent Search Engine Strategies conference where representatives from the major traffic measurement agencies weighed on what's really happening out there in the world of web search.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 6:00 AM | Permalink

March 7, 2005

Most Conversions Happen Offline; You Need To Measure These!

In his ClickZ article, Nonconverting Keywords and the Search Continuum, Fredrick Marckini is stunned that some comScore and Overture research about conversions released at the end of last year hasn't been more widely discussed. It should have been, because it revealed how important tracking offline conversions is to search marketers.

The research was initially released during the holiday shopping season and just as many were taking time off from work, which is why it got lost in the shuffle for many (we did blog it). But the good news is that plenty of people heard about it again during the recent SES show, where it was constantly coming up on various panels.

As Fredrick recaps, 92 percent of all conversions were found to take place OFFLINE. That means anyone who is not measuring offline conversions may be missing out on a big chunk of how successful a search campaign is.

Knowing this is critical, as prices rise. If you fully understand how things convert, then you better understand how much you can afford to pay -- which can make the difference in letting you bid more when your competitor, with poor conversion tracking, may decide to opt-out.

Fredrick's article runs through some tips and observations from analysts on how to ensure the offline conversion happens. Those are useful, but I think the bigger point is that they already happen but people aren't attributing them to their search campaigns.

The first part of his article, blogged briefly already, covers some issues to consider in terms of understand that many searches may happen before a purchase occurs, so you need to consider a wide range of terms to target.

Another thing to consider came up when comScore discussed the research on our The Search Landscape panel. Of the remaining 8 percent of conversions that happen online, the vast majority of those DO NOT happen within the same search.

In other words, I think it was like 1 percent of people sit down, do a search, visit a site and then purchase in the same surfing session. Most do a search, then do other things, then eventually return to do other searches and finally do a purchase over a period of time that can take months. So that means measuring your online conversions over a long period of time is also crucial.

I moderated that Search Landscape panel and ended up summarizing things for someone who asked a question about how conversions with search marketing differ from other types of marketing in this way:

Not all conversions happen at once online, so you've got to measure over a long period of time, or you'll miss some.
Not all conversions happen online, so if you don't measure offline in some way, you'll miss more.
If you feel some branding happens with search, you want to measure that as well in some way. Doing so may help you understand that you can afford to pay even more to gain an initial visitor.

Some other reading along these lines to consider from past blog posts:

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:57 AM | Permalink

February 11, 2005

Fresh comScore & NetRatings Stats Posted

I've updated the long-standing comScore Media Metrix Search Engine Ratings and Nielsen NetRatings Search Engine Ratings pages I maintain with figures that show search engine popularity for December 2004, the latest available.

The comScore figures show Google still with the largest slice of the search pie though Yahoo is just barely behind. But Google's share is larger when you factor in the searches at AOL that it powers. Also please note that technically, MSN wasn't providing its own results that month, as shown on the provider pie. But it's better to show it that way and avoid confusion with some who will view it, given that MSN is now a provider.

The NetRatings figures give you a look at more than just the very top search engines, instead stretching to the top 15. But some of those will probably have some of you scratching your head. Information.com is more popular than Netscape Search? But note the average search time figures also shown. They indicate places people might go and stay, as opposed to wind up on somehow and depart quickly.

The NetRatings figures also don't show the entire share of search but as explain on that page simply reflect "audience reach," whether someone simply did even one search at the search engine in a given month.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 4:52 PM | Permalink

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