September 16, 2009

Want to Move Product this Holiday Season? Offer Free Shipping

Hitwise has released data showing how the term "free shipping" trends over time. Not surprisingly, it tends to spark just before the holidays.

Notice how the term spikes even higher as the years go by. Also, Hitwise says the peak for "free shipping" when online consumers are looking for great post-holiday deals.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 1:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

August 19, 2009

70% of Canadians Have to Search Again

New data from Hitwise shows that Canadians are having a hard time finding what they're looking for in search. Up to 70% of Canadian searches are dubbed "unsuccessful" meaning the searcher needs to query again.

They often do better if they include the word "Canada" in it. According to Hitwise Senior Online Analyst Heather Hopkins:

The success rate for searches for "walmart" was 88.83% while for "walmart canada" it was 92.54%.
The success rate for searches for "home depot" was 84.25% while for "home depot canada" it was 92.33%.

The data comes from search data of the twelve weeks ending June 27, 2009.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 4:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 9, 2009

Facebook, Games Rank as Top Canadian Search Terms

Yesterday, we reported on data from Hitwise on the length of keywords in Canadian searches. Today, Hitwise has released information on what Canadians are searching for.

Of the top 100 searches, only 13 are generic (In the US, only 9 out of the top 100 are generic). The rest are navigational. Take a look:

As you can see, games was the top generic term, coming in at #18. Eight of the top 100 terms were related to games. When looking at French search terms, "jeux" (games) was the highest generic term as well. (Americans search for games, but the term comes in at #85.)

Out of the top 100, 16 were for social networks, 14 retail, and 9 banking.

What do you think of this Hitwise data? Let us know in the comments.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

June 8, 2009

Half of Canadian Web Searches Contain Just 1-2 Words

If brevity is the soul of wit, then Canadian web searchers are hilarious. According to new statistics by Hitwise, about half of Canadian internet searches are kept to just 1-2 words. As you can see by the chart below, Americans are the most wordy, while Brits keep it short and sweet.

Hitwise says that banks and financial information is often sought by just 1 word, while shopping and classifieds sites show similar search patterns to all categories (as depicted in the image above).

Hitwise just started a Canadian data-gathering effort and will be releasing more information about Canadian searches in the coming days. We'll keep tracking the info, so stay tuned.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 3, 2009

GM Won't Come Back from Bankruptcy, If Searches are Any Indication

Hitwise has released disturbing data on searches for GM brands. As, I'm sure you're aware, GM filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this past Monday and the spin from the company is that they hope to come back. But if searches are any indicator, that hope isn't based in reality.

There is a steady decline in searches for Chevrolet, Saturn, Pontiac and GMC since May 2006.

None of the brands show up in the Top Ten automotive brand searches. Chevrolet comes closest, clocking in at #12.

Toyota
Honda
Ford
Nissan
Hyundai
Dodge
Kia
Suzuki
Volkswagon
Jeep

Even worse for GM is that the keyword variations surrounding their searches have to do with financial information - things like stock price, bankruptcy, and bondholder interest.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 18, 2009

Traffic Referral Share Drops for Paid Search While Organic Gains

Hitwise has new data out showing that the percentage of traffic referrals from paid search compared to other traffic sources has declined in the past year. This should not be thought of as a drop in paid search traffic. In fact, the opposite is true. But if you're looking at the pie of what drives traffic to a site, paid search's slice has become smaller.

Search as a whole, however, is increasing. That means organic has to be driving things, which could be a result of the economy affecting marketing budgets.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 7:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 20, 2009

'Family Guy' Tops Internal Search List for Hulu

Hitwise has compiled a list of the top internal searches at Hulu.com. The following list is the top 10 searches during the week of March 21, 2009:

family guy
transformers cartoon
lie to me
the office
keeping up with the kardashians
24
battlestar galactica
bones
damages
the simpsons

In the top 100, Hitwise says 83 were television-related. 8 were Law and Order searches.

Hulu was launched just over a year ago by NBC Universal in partnership with Fox. Last week, YouTube announced partnerships to place television and movie programming on its site.The internet television race is heating up!

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 12:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

April 15, 2009

Online Map Wars: Google Passes MapQuest Just Before Easter

Hitwise has release new dating showing Google Maps surpassing MapQuest the week ending in Easter weekend.

MapQuest visitors remain on the site longer at 10 minutes 51 seconds compared to Google Maps' 7 minutes 24 seconds. But could that mean Google Maps users are finding what they want faster? Or are people enjoying MapQuest's interactive features more?

Tell us what you think in the comments below.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 2:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

March 23, 2009

Craigslist Beats MySpace in Top Searched Terms Last Week; eBay Drives Paid Listings

Hitwise is reporting that Craigslist beat MySpace in the top searched terms last week in the U.S. Their one year graph shows MySpace on the decline with Craigslist and Facebook on a parallel rise:

Meanwhile, eBay is driving the most traffic from paid search listings in the U.S.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

March 13, 2009

Hitwise Report Details Downstream Visits from Twitter

After people are on Twitter.com, where do they browse? Hitwise has released a report with data that answers that question and more.

Interestingly enough, people go to Google and Facebook from Twitter. Here's the data from February 2009:

Here's a look at the categories of post-Twitter visits:

And here's how Twitter compares to other categories and their downstreams:

What this data doesn't show are clicks from Twitter desktop and mobile clients. As a result, this is only a snapshot of the Twitter downstream.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

December 24, 2008

Considering a Last Minute Gift Card? You're Not Alone

It's Christmas Eve. If you're in need of a last minute gift, might I suggest gift cards? You won't be alone, contrary to reports that gift cards are on their way out. At least, that's according to new data on gift card searches released by Hitwise.

Sure, there's been a dip in searches, but gift cards are very much alive.

Besides, this data doesn't even include the number of people going directly to a website and ordering a gift card. That's what I do. I've bought e-gift cards for Apple iTunes, Amazon.com and Southwest Air without ever conducting search.

But those conducting searches reveal an interesting trend: searching for discounted gift cards that can be found via Craigslist. Sometimes people get or purchase gift cards they won't use so they sell them for less than the value of the card on Craigslist.

An analysis of search terms "breadth" shows just how popular this trend is:

Want to win an American Express gift card? Then take the Search Engine Watch Readership Survey and enter to win a $200 gift card.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 7, 2008

Bill Tancer of Hitwise Analyzes Economy on SES Webcast

Just a quick reminder, Bill Tancer, the General Manager of Research at Hitwise and one of the keynote speakers at Search Engine Strategies Chicago, will be interviewed by Matt McGowan, Global VP of Marketing at Incisive Media, during an SES Webcast today, Nov. 7, 2008, at 1:00 p.m. EDT / 10:00 a.m. PDT. The title of Bill's presentation is: “We Are What We Search.”

Bill is going to talk primarily about what search term data can tell us about the economy and consumer sentiment. He'll also spend some time on finding insights on the effect of an economic downturn on search. You might expect that with recent contractions in online retail that search traffic to that category would be declining. However, Hitwise data -- while showing a recent small drop-off -- indicates that search traffic to retail is up over the previous year.

Bill will give Webcast participants opportunities to ask him their most burning search trend questions! Oh, and he will give away 10 copies of his latest book, “Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why It Matters,” to the best questions fielded during the SES Webcast.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 8:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 31, 2008

We Are What We Search

Bill Tancer, the General Manager of Research at Hitwise and one of the keynote speakers at Search Engine Strategies Chicago, will be interviewed by Matt McGowan, Global VP of Marketing at Incisive Media, during an SES Webcast on Friday, Nov. 7, 2008, at 1:00 p.m. EDT / 10:00 a.m. PDT. The title of Bill's presentation is: “We Are What We Search.”

At a time when search engines are rapidly replacing the yellow pages (and news search engines are routinely scooping daily newspapers), Bill has access to a wealth of consumer information about Internet user behavior that was never available before. Bill is well known in the search industry for mining the latest Hitwise data, which is a sample of over 10 million Internet users U.S. and 25 million worldwide, to glean insights on the sites we collectively visit, what we search for and what that tells us about ourselves.

I spoke with Bill yesterday and he shared this news nugget with me: “I'm going to talk primarily about what search term data can tell us about the economy and consumer sentiment. I'll also spend some time on finding insights on the effect of an economic downturn on search. You might expect that with recent contractions in online retail that search traffic to that category would be declining....Our data (while showing a recent small drop-off) indicates that search traffic to retail is up over the previous year....”

Bill's webcast will cover other news-breaking search trends, implications for online advertisers, and he will give Webcast participants opportunities to ask him their most burning search trend questions! Oh, and Bill will give away 10 copies of his latest book, “Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why It Matters,” to the best questions fielded during the SES Webcast.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 26, 2008

Facebook Traffic Up 50% Over Last Year; myYearbook on the Rise

Facebook's market share is up 50% year-over-year, according to data released by Hitwise. myYearbook.com saw a 256% growth, propelling it into the third spot for most visited social network sites in the United States in August 2008. Still, they only had 1.65% of the total share.

MySpace lost market share, 10% to be exact. But it still holds the number one spot at 67.54% of the market.

Here are the charts:

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

August 15, 2008

Google Close to 71% of Searches in July 2008

Google was the recipient of 70.77% of U.S. searches in July 2008, up from 69.17% in June, according to Hitwise. Yahoo and Microsoft continued to drop, at 18.65% and 5.36% respectively. Ask.com dropped month-over-month but gained year-over-year, coming in at 3.53%.

Here's the breakdown of niche traffic:

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

April 17, 2008

Search Gains on Social Media in Share of Online Video Referrals

Hitwise is reporting data showing that search and social media are virtually equal when it comes to the share of referrals to online video.

In the week ending April 12, 2008, the share of search referrals were up 35% year-over-year, while the share of social media referrals was down by 20%.

Within search referrals, Google's share increased by 44% and Yahoo's increased by 13%. Within social media referrals, the share of MySpace.com referrals declined by 25%.

The increase in search referrals is likely attributed to universal and blended search.

Still, online videos are gaining in popularity. comScore is reporting that over 10.8 billion online videos were viewed in the month of February alone, up 3% from January and 66% from February 2007. And Hitwise adds context with reporting that viewers spent an average of 16 minutes and 12 seconds watching online videos last week, up from 15 minutes and 14 minutes year-over-year.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:48 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

January 31, 2007

More Search Share Numbers

Following the share-of-search statistics from Compete and comScore, we now have numbers from Hitwise and Nielsen/NetRatings.

Nielsen puts Google on top with 50.8 percent of all searches in December, with Yahoo in second with 23.6 percent. Windows Live Search is a distant third with 8.4 percent, then AOL with 6.1 percent.

Hitwise puts Google at 63.1 percent for both December and January. Yahoo volume dropped slightly from 21.6 percent in December to 21.4 percent in January. MSN Search gained share slightly, from 9.5 percent in December to 9.9 percent in January. Ask volume dipped from 3.7 percent of search volume in December to 3.5 percent in January. AOL saw a modest decline, from 0.6 percent share of searches in December to 0.5 percent in January.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 11:10 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 6, 2006

Hitwise: 'Social Local Search' Growing Fast

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

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

Posted by Greg Sterling at 10:59 AM | Permalink

September 19, 2006

Video Search Usage for August 2006

Hitwise just released August 2006 market share data for the most popular online video search sites. Not surprisingly, YouTube leads with a 45.46% share of visits. MySpace Videos follows with about half the search traffic at 22.99%, and Google Video is the next closest with 10.25% of market share. Yahoo! Video and MSN Video round out the Top 5, with 6.06% and 5.92%, respectively.

Posted by Elisabeth Osmeloski at 2:20 PM | Permalink

September 13, 2006

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

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

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

Beyond the US, there's also:

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 2:49 PM | Permalink

August 23, 2006

Hitwise: Google & Yahoo Make Tiny Gains In July 2006

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

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

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

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

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

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

Search Engine Domain

6/06

7/06

Change

Google www.google.com

59.8%

60.2%

0.5%

Yahoo search.yahoo.com

22.3%

22.5%

0.3%

MSN search.msn.com

12.1%

11.8%

-0.3%

Ask www.ask.com

3.6%

3.3%

-0.3%

AOL search.aol.com

1.05%

1.01%

-0.04%

For The 4 Week Period Ending:

7/1/06

7/29/06

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:50 AM | Permalink

August 3, 2006

Google Reaches 60% Search Market Share

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

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

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:03 AM | Permalink

July 12, 2006

MySpace More Popular Than Google Or Yahoo

Bill Tancer over at his HitWise blog has data that claims MySpace Moves Into #1 Position for all Internet Sites. This is incredibly important, MySpace.com is more popular that Yahoo Mail, and MySpace's growth of visits has surpassed Google towards the end of May of this year. But as Bill points out, what is most revealing is that the "top search terms driving traffic to all Internet sites" is MySpace and MySpace.com with 1.28%, compared with last years top search term being eBay at .31%. See all the details at HitWise.

Postscript: Yahoo disputes the validity of comparing the MySpace domain to only individual properties in their network, as covered more here, and Yahoo's Jeremy Zawodny has some observations as well here.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:21 AM | Permalink

June 23, 2006

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

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

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 11:10 AM | Permalink

June 8, 2006

Hitwise: Google Nearing 60% Of Queries In US

Just over a week ago, NetRatings said Google went over the 50 percent mark in powering web searches in the US. New stats today from Hitwise put them nearing the 60 percent mark. Here's the percentage of searches each service handled over the past three months, according to Hitwise:

Domain March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 www.google.com 58.3% 58.6% 59.3% search.yahoo.com 22.3% 22.2% 22.0% search.msn.com 13.1% 12.6% 12.1%

Data based on four week period: May (4/30ï¿œ5/27); April (4/2ï¿œ4/29) and March (3/5-4/1)

How about a side-by-side of from the three major rating services? OK:

April 2006 comScore NetRatings Hitwise Google 43% 50% 59% Yahoo 28% 22% 22% MSN 13% 11% 12%

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 3:08 PM | Permalink

US, UK Searchers & The World Cup

The World Cup opens tomorrow. For my fellow Americans, many of whom may have no idea that the US is in it, you might want to check out my personal experiences living in World Cup-mad Eng-er-land at the moment. And now the run-up to search and soccer is starting. Hitwise: World Cup and Soccer Searches over at iMedia Connection covers stats from Hitwise showing how Yahoo sent the official FIFA World Cup site the most traffic -- no surprise given Yahoo's a key sponsor. You can also see what soccer players are most popular among US searchers, with former women's team player Mia Hamm leading the pack.

I don't see any of this data over at the Hitwise analyst weblogs yet or in news releases. But watch the blogs. I guarantee Bill Tancer or one of his colleagues will jump in to do a big giant thing now, since the relatively sparse data out there now is already getting my attention.

And another bet. If you looked for the most popular searched for football payer based on UK data recently, it would be Wayne Rooney. A nation over here is relieved that his toe has healed (ok, ok, his metatarsal) and he'll be able to play.

Hey, I don't need no stinkin' Hitwise. Here's a Google trends chart. Just look at the spike. Here, compare to superstar David Beckham (my claim to fame -- his kid and my kid were both in the same group that drove cars at Legoland a few years ago). The chart also shows Theo Walcott, recently named to the team with much amazement. Theo's spike is nothing like Wayne's and David hardly get it up at all. Here's also a UK specific view.

Postscript: Heck, Hitwise was already moving in the UK. Heather Hopkins has just posted UK stats here: Wayne Rooney Injury, David Beckham Hairstyles and Peter Crouch Dance. And while Wayne Rooney did have a spike, Peter Crouch and his robot dance seems to have pushed that player past Rooney in terms of searches recently. Google Trends doesn't show that -- but Google Trends doesn't run into May, when Crouch spike happened. Also from Hitwise PR side, a list of top footballers searched for in the UK:

Most Searched-for World Cup Footballers Week Ending 3rd June 2006

Rank Name

1 Ronaldinho

2 Steven Gerrard

3 Peter Crouch

4 David Beckham

5 Wayne Rooney

6 Cristiano Ronaldo

7 Frank Lampard

8 Thierry Henry

9 Ronaldo

10 Theo Walcott

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:33 AM | Permalink

June 7, 2006

Hitwise: Google Tops For UK Web Search But Weak With Other Offerings

Figures recently released from web monitoring firm Hitwise provide mixed messages from the UK for Google and their major competitors. The bare bones of the statistics show that Google (combining the .com and .co.uk sites) continues to dominate the search market in the UK, executing more than three quarters of British searches. MSN Search and Yahoo! Search each powered just over 7 percent each. Ask.com brings up the rear with a 5 percent share. So 96 percent of searches run in the UK are run by four companies when combining the .com and UK properties. Good news for Google one might think, but it all goes downhill from there, and the statistics show that while they are tops for search, theyre far behind in most other areas.

Email: If we look at the Hitwise comparision of the Google, Yahoo and MSN UK portals, in the area of email, MSN Hotmail gets over 52% of visits, Yahoo Mail takes a combined total of just over 23% of visits, while Google Mail languishes in 8th place with just 2.2%.
News: In the area of news and media the BBC unsurprisingly dominates with almost 30% of the visits going to their main site or specifically to the news page. A combination of Yahoo! news resources manages to get almost 2.5% and a combination of Google news resources doesn?t quite reach 2%.
Finance: In the business area, Google Finance only manages to be the 201st most visited resource, while both Yahoo! UK and Ireland Finance and MSN Money UK are in 1st and 5th place respectively.
Maps: Google fairs a little better when it comes to Map information with Google Maps in 3rd position with 13.11%; Google UK Maps and Google Earth account for 5th and 6th place with a combined total of 8.47.%. In the Shopping and Classifieds area Froogle manages 7th place with 2.49% and MSN Shopping in 11th with 2.16%.

Now, having got the figures out of the way, what messages can the three players take from the UK market? Google is obviously the place that the average user will go to get information, but the highest volume of searches were navigational, for sites such as eBay, Hotmail and Yahoo! To be fair, the same thing could be said of the other search engines as well; this is not a specific criticism of Google.

Indeed, the Hitwise data also shows that visitors to Google perform multiple searches, and use it as a navigational point from which to go where they want to. Clearly, UK searchers understand the power that Google has to help them find things, yet the message hasn?t got through about their other resources, and I think there are a number of reasons for this.

Experienced internet commentators know how to find out what Google and the rest are up to and which sites to visit. However, the average person in the street, when they look at the Google UK page see the search box, and they know what to do with that. They type in their search and off they go ? Google is there to help them navigate around the web.

But there?s no mention of their email offering, nothing about the calendar, or most of the other interesting things they are doing on the home page. True, there is the navigational bar above the search box, but what does that tell the inexperienced user? ?Graphics? is clear and ?News? makes sense, but ?Groups? or ?Froogle?? Unless a user is curious enough to click on the links they?ll never know. Besides, there is no incentive for them to find out, because Google is very good at what it does ? helps them navigate around the web. A searcher, particularly one who is new or unconfident really does need to be spoon fed; they need to know that if they click on something it will take them where they expect to go.

If we compare this to the Yahoo! UK & Ireland home page, there is a completely different feel. While I, as an experienced searcher might like the clear minimalist Google approach, the Yahoo! page is interesting, vibrant and it provides links that the user can follow. ?Video?, ?Audio? ?Business Finder?, ?Games?, ?Movies? all clearly explain what the user will get if they click on the link. Yahoo! Answers and ?In the News? again project Yahoo! as a place to get information and content. ?My Yahoo!? is so much more compelling than ?Personalised Home?. In short, the Yahoo! page is interesting, and pushes their visitors to other resources and content that they provide, and it?s no surprise to see that the logo in the top left leads to Finance where they are way out in front.

Now, it could be argued that the MSN UK home page does the same sort of thing as Yahoo! in providing links to different resources, but once again the feel of the page, from the searcher?s viewpoint, is entirely different. It?s quieter, more compact (or even dense), with an advert taking up a lot of the space above the fold. However, above that, and just below the search box are the options for ?My MSN?, ?Messenger? and ?Hotmail?. The names are reasonably intuitive for the novice user, and the link to ?Hotmail? is reassuring. Even the name is familiar; while we say ?Google it? when relating to search, everyone knows that ?Hotmail? refers to email.

Using an analogy to compare the three home pages, Google is a monastery ? silent and contemplative, MSN UK is a sophisticated dinner party, very refined and conversational, and Yahoo! is a loud, friendly and welcoming party. It?s no wonder that Heather Hopkins, director of research for Hitwise UK is quoted as saying ?Consumers are moving among these three Internet brands and seem to clearly distinguish the users of each. UK consumers use Google to navigate and search the web, MSN to communicate and Yahoo! for content.?

Is my analysis indepth and based on sound scientific principles? No, of course it isn?t; it?s based on being a searcher, watching and learning how other people search. People are not stupid, but equally will subconsciously take messages from the sites that they visit, and I think these statistics show quite clearly that all three companies are being very successful with the messages they are sending out. The question is, do they fully realize what those messages are?

Posted by Phil Bradley at 6:42 AM | Permalink

May 19, 2006

Google's Main Search Accounts For 80% of Google's Traffic

Bill Tancer from Hitwise has posted a detailed breakdown of the percentage market share of the top twenty Google properties. Google.com holds almost 80% of the share, followed by Google Image Search with almost 10%, then Gmail with about 5.5%, followed by Google News with 1.5% and the others are all under 1%. Bill also explains the trends show that "some of the latest Google offerings have yet to capture significant market share in their category," such as Google Finance. There are some interesting stats to chew on by Bill Tancer.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:03 AM | Permalink

May 3, 2006

Nearly 10 Percent Of Amazon Visitors Clicked Off To Google

Yesterday, I wrote about how Amazon had ended its relationship with Google and why not being in Amazon -- rather than Amazon-owned A9 -- was potentially the bigger issue for Google. Now in Google, Amazon and MSN, Bill Tancer over at Hitwise provides some stats detailing how Amazon, rather than A9, drove more "downstream" traffic to Google.

Bill's stats show how nearly 10 percent of all departures from Amazon went to Google, compared to only 2 percent of all departures from A9 going to Google. Also keep in mind that Amazon's traffic -- though not shown -- is certainly much larger than A9's traffic. Not only is the percentage larger, but the sheer volume of people is bigger too.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our SEW Forums thread, Amazon Ditches Google For Microsoft.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:14 AM | Permalink

April 26, 2006

Search Stats Don't Have to be Boring

There's no shortage of data related to search marketing, with everything from market share numbers to frequency of search terms analyzed by market research groups. Some find all this data deathly boring—but it doesn't have to be. In fact, with the appropriate presentation style, search data can be downright entertaining, as it was at a recent Search Engine Strategies panel. Christine Churchill has the rundown on the panel in today's SearchDay article, Searchonomics: Search Statistics Made Fun.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:27 AM | Permalink

April 17, 2006

Branded Searches Lead To Non Company Site 15% Off The Time

ClickZ reports on a Hitwise study that shows that 15% of branded searches lead to competitor's sites, comparison shopping engines and affiliates as opposed to the official brand Web site. The study also shows that branded searches are up 17 percent over the same period last year. The study shows that for some branded keyword searches, diversion from the official company site is as high as 26 percent, as with the case with the search query "allstate insurance." You can request a copy of the report here.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Search Engine Watch Forums thread, What Percentage Of Brand Name Traffic Should Brand Names Get?

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:33 AM | Permalink

December 29, 2005

YouTube Pops Above Google Video Thanks To SNL Clip

So here's a mashup for you. I wrote earlier about YouTube and how I didn't really trust Alexa data to prove the popularity of anything. Gary wrote of a popular Saturday Night Live skit being shared through places like YouTube and Google Video. LeeAnn Prescott over at Hitwise puts the two together with some nice charts to show YouTube's rising popularity plus a big boost it got thanks to that SNL clip.

SNL Chronicles of Narnia Rap causes YouTube to Overtake Google Video Search is the rundown, and you can see how it caused a big uptick at YouTube -- so much so that YouTube overtook Google Video in usage. But also note that YouTube has been steadily gaining for the past few months. The Hitwise data I trust more than Alexa monitoring, so color me convinced that the service is growing! Yahoo Video remains well above both of the other services, however. What's not growing is AOL's long established Singingfish site.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 2:15 AM | Permalink

December 20, 2005

With One Link, Google Book Search Becomes Google's 5th Most Popular Service

Google Print Is Google's Ninth Most Popular Service here on the blog last month covered how according to Hitwise, Google Print -- since renamed Google Book Search -- made the top ten of most used Google services, though usage was only by a tiny 0.4 percent of Google visitors. Since then, a small change by Google has dramatically increased the visits to Google Book search and pushed it into being the fifth most popular service it offers.

Bill Tancer of Hitwise, who loves nothing more than to play with the stats his competitive analysis service has on user behavior, dropped me an update yesterday showing how the Google top ten line up had changed from the last time I wrote about it. Here's the rundown:

Service

Week Ending Nov. 5

Week Ending Dec. 10

Point Change

Percent Change Google Web Search

79.9%

79.1%

-0.9%

-1.1% Google Image Search

9.2%

9.3%

0.1%

1.2% Google Mail/Gmail

5.6%

5.4%

-0.3%

-4.5% Google News

1.6%

1.5%

-0.1%

-4.4% Google Book Search

0.4%

1.5%

1.1%

322.9% Froogle

0.7%

0.9%

0.2%

33.3% Google Maps

0.8%

0.7%

-0.1%

-13.3% Google Earth

0.3%

0.5%

0.2%

69.0% Google Groups/ Groups 2 Beta

0.5%

-0.1%

-9.4% Google Directory

0.2%

0.0%

6.3%

As you can see, Google Web Search remains the most used service by far. Google Book Search, which had been the ninth most popular service, moved up to position five.

Notice the point change and percent change columns. The first shows the raw percentage point change between the two time periods. Google Web Search had a dip of less than 1 percent, so no major change. Google Book Search had a point change of just over 1 percent. In the case of that service, this was a big deal.

Why? The percentage change column tells the story. That 1 percent point increase for Google Book Search means relatively speaking, it went up over 300 percent in traffic -- more than three times the number that used it a month ago are now turning to the service. In contrast, a 1 percent change either way with Google Web Search is a drop in the bucket.

So what gives? What happened? Cast your mind back to mid-November, when Google started putting at the bottom of regular search results pages this message:

Try your search again on Google Book Search

For more on that change, see Google SERPs pushing Google Books at our SEW Forums, When Will Google Do An Amazon at Smart Keywords and Google Book Search Within SERPs at Search Engine Roundtable.

Was the change responsible for the increase? And what about Google Groups, which has had somewhat similar promotion on the bottom of results? The chart tells the tale:

You can see that just after Google Book Search links were added, traffic to Google Book Search skyrocketed. Being on the first page of search results is clearly powerful, as search marketers obviously know. As for Google Groups, it didn't change. This may be because Google Groups links never always appeared, in contrast to Google Book Search links, which seem to always show up. It could also be that more people find the Google Book Search link more relevant.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:57 AM | Permalink

December 1, 2005

The UK Goes "Searching" for Broadband

So what's the most popular product search in the UK? According to Hitwise and this article from Netimperative it's "broadband."

Internet research firm Hitwise found that the term ?broadband? was the top product search term sending visits to retail websites for the week ending 26 November 2005, with a 35% year-on-year increase in the volume of UK searches. ?Offline advertising has led to brand name searches online, with 9 of the top 20 search terms that include the keyword ?broadband? including the name of a provider.?

More Numbers Hitwise data shows that searches for ?bulldog broadband? were up 899% year-on-year last week, searches for ?virgin broadband? were up 20%, and searches for ?toucan broadband? were up 272%. The most popular generic searches (those that do not include a brand name) for broadband are ?broadband providers?, ?cheap broadband? and ?broadband deals?, the figures reveal.

Want more stats on popular search terms? Make sure to visit the Hitwise Intelligence compiled by Bill Tancer and his team. It's one of those sites that's interesting, fun, and useful.

Posted by Gary Price at 5:56 PM | Permalink

November 22, 2005

Search Marketing Working for Comparison Shopping Sites

The holiday shopping season is in full swing, and aggressive search marketing on the part of comparison shopping sites is paying off. Google and Yahoo! Search sent 25 percent more visits to the ten leading shopping comparison sites versus last year (week ending November 19, 2005 versus the week ending November 20, 2004), according to Hitwise.

U.S visits to retail websites accounted for 9.32 percent of all visits to the Internet, last week, and the top growing retail categories were:

Flowers and Gifts (up 13.4%); Ticketing (up 11.5%); Department Stores (up 10.5%); Rewards and Directories (up 9.7%) and Appliances and Electronics (up 8.3%).

Other data from Hitwise:

Retail (9.32 percent) was the second most popular online category after Adult (16.8%). Retail is again ahead of Email sites (8.9 percent).

The leading product-related search terms driving traffic to retail Web sites were "ipod," "furniture," "auto parts," "lingerie," "tires," "toys," "mp3 players," "xbox 360," "flowers" and "ipod mini."

Hitwise offers more holiday related stats over on the Hitwise Intelligence blog.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 1:01 PM | Permalink

November 17, 2005

Tasty: Searching for Recipes Increases

The Media Daily News Brief: Hitwise: Recipe Searches Surge, discusses some new numbers that show people are looking for recipes on the web as Thanksgiving Day approaches here in the U.S.

From the article: Almost Half--48 Percent--Of Visits To food and beverage reference sites originated at search engines for the week ending Nov. 12, according to numbers released by Hitwise Wednesday. The research group considered that a high number compared to shopping and classifieds and grocery and alcohol sites, which received 30 percent of upstream visits from search engines over that period. The share of searches for "recipes" was up 25 percent for the week ending Nov. 12, versus the prior week, and visits to the top 10 recipe sites were up 9 percent in the same period.

You can find more info including a table of top sites in this news release.

Just for fun. If you're interested in just what recipes are searching for:

From the news release: What recipes are consumers searching for leading up to Thanksgiving? Hitwise Search Intelligence data reveals that of the leading search terms sending visits to Food and Beverage - Reference sites, those with the largest increases for the week ending Nov. 12, 2005 compared to the previous week were: "butternut squash recipes" up 279 percent, "sweet potato casserole" up 130 percent, "thanksgiving recipes" up 89 percent, and "green bean casserole" up 74 percent.

And speaking of recipe search... Recently, Ask Jeeves launched a Smart Answer that places direct links to recipe info at the top of web results pages.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:28 PM | Permalink

November 8, 2005

Holiday Shopping in Full Swing, According to Search Data

Hitwise has been tracking a rise in holiday-related search queries in the U.S. since September, and saw significant jumps last week over the prior week for "christmas" (up 41 percent), "christmas gift ideas" (up 185 percent), "christmas gifts" (up 92 percent) and "christmas decorations" (up 75 percent).

No surprise here: "ipod" is the most popular product search term. Variations such as "ipod mini," "ipod nano" and "ipods," take three additional slots in the top ten product searches. Other popular product searches include "dell computers," "barbie," "xbox 360" and "build a bear."

Want more data from Hitwise? Bill Tancer, general manager of research at the company, is posting regularly to his new blog, and plans to serve up more data about holiday shopping and search as the season advances.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 4:50 PM | Permalink

Google Print Is Google's Ninth Most Popular Service

With all the debate over what Google Print might do to publishers, I was wondering if anyone was even using the service? Surely it wouldn't even crack the top ten of the most used Google services. As it turns out, indeed it does.

I turned to Bill Tancer of competitive intelligence service Hitwise, who showed on his great blog recently how most traffic from Google Print flows "downstream" to online book sellers.

That's not surprising, given that Google provides links to booksellers as part of the pages it displays in Google Print. FYI, last time we checked, Google said it does not earn of off any book sales generated from visits that Google Print generates.

But how many people actually use Google Print at all? Bill said Hitwise couldn't generate audience estimates, but he did give me a percentage breakdown of traffic to all Google sites for a one week period ending Nov. 5. The summary is below (rounded to the nearest tenth of a percent for all visits, except those below a tenth of a percent):

Google Web Search: 79.9 percent
Google Image Search: 9.2 percent
Google Mail/Gmail: 5.6 percent
Google News: 1.6 percent
Google Maps: 0.8 percent
Froogle: 0.7 percent
Google Scholar: 0.6 percent
Google Groups/Groups 2 Beta: 0.5 percent
Google Print: 0.4 percent
Google Earth: 0.3 percent
Google Directory: 0.2 percent
Google Local: 0.1 percent
Google Answers: 0.1 percent
Google AdWords: 0.06 percent
Google Desktop Search: 0.04 percent
Google Talk: 0.02 percent

As you can see, Google Print doesn't have a ton of use compared to other Google services -- but it was still impressive to see it cracked the top ten.

Also notice how Google Local is below Google Maps. Google recently turned Google Maps into Google Local, and it's not hard to see why. If Google Maps was getting more traffic, the merging the two was an easy way to get more usage of local.

However, earlier this year Google said that Google Local was more popular than Froogle. It could be that Hitwise might not be counting the Google Maps/Google Local visits correctly due to the change. I'm checking with Bill on this and will postscript a follow up.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:37 PM | Permalink

October 13, 2005

Hitwise: Google Leads in UK Search Race

According to new research from Hitwise, Google powers 7 in 10 UK searches. The study also reported that 94% of all UK searches come from the top four engines.

Overall ...Google, Ask, Yahoo Search, and MSN Search powered nearly 19 out of 20 (94%) UK internet searches. This equates to 14% of search engines (8 out of 57) powering 94% of searches, and the trend for consolidation is increasing, the research revealed.

October 2004 vs. October 2005 Comparing the four weeks ending 1 October 2005 and the four weeks ending 2 October 2004, the volume of searches powered by the combined UK and .com properties of Google, MSN Search, Yahoo! Search and Ask has increased by 70%. "These gains have been driven by growth in searches performed on Google UK and MSN.co.uk Search", said Heather Hopkins, director of research for Hitwise UK. Hopkins added, "MSN and Google have been extremely successful at promoting their search toolbars, driving up the volume of UK searches they power. MSN has also likely benefited from the default search page on Internet Explorer."

Google UK Domination Google UK continues to dominate the search engine market in the UK, powering 63% of all internet searches in the four-week period ending 1 October 2005. Collectively Google UK and Google.com power 70% of UK Internet searches.

MSN.co.uk placed second with 8% of all UK searches for the same four week time frame.

More in the Netimperative article: Google powers 7 in 10 UK searches.

Posted by Gary Price at 8:34 PM | Permalink

October 6, 2005

Hitwise Blogs Search Stats

Hitwise is a great source of data about what people search for, and Bill Tancer over there who heads global research has started up a new blog here already filled with some nice gems.

Search Term Pairs looks at spikes for searches on engagement rings versus wedding dresses. Notes from Vegas: Search Terms and the Competitive Substitute looks at how searches for online poker go up as sports betting drop, making him wonder if the same people are doing both but can't afford to do both at the same time.

Batman is in, Elmo is out tells me the Thunderbirds costumes I got for the kids for Halloween aren't making the top ten list of terms containing costumes. Guess I should be dressing them up like pirates, the top term, or Batman, the second. Pirate was a top term last year. Elmo, it turns out, is not.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:07 PM | Permalink

August 23, 2005

Hitwise: Google Also Tops In July 2005 & Awesome Report On US Search Landscape

Similar to the comScore data I just posted, the latest Hitwise stats show Google was the most popular search engine in the US, in July 2005. Our Hitwise Search Engines Ratings page is now updated with full details. Google's had noticeable gains over the past three months, as has AOL. Most others have generally had tiny declines -- small enough that they are essentially static.

Hitwise also is offering its new Hitwise US Online Search Report (free upon request) that's chock full of stats for those interested in the search landscape. It's not always Google tops, as you look across the diverse range of search activities that happen. The report is highly recommended reading. Some highlights:

Google Dominant: The report has top search engines for the week of July 23, 2005, based on share of visits. Similar to what our Hitwise stats posted show, Google is top ranked, with more than double the share of its closest competitor, Yahoo.
Image Search Grows: The report says Google Image Search nearly doubled and Yahoo Image Search more than doubled traffic when comparing the week of July 23, 2005 to the same period in 2004.
Google's Share Growing: Based on share of actual searches, Google is reported to have grown from 51.9 percent in July 2004 to 59.2 percent in July 2005. Over the same period, Yahoo and MSN saw decreases.
Shopping Top Downstream Destination: Across the board, people head to shopping and classified sites more than any other types, after doing a search. Entertainment and Business & Finances are also popular categories.
Portals Power Search: Yahoo and MSN are shown to get a significant number of searches from those who start out on their portal pages (FYI, a slight skew here in my opinion. Many searching from www.yahoo.com may not consider themselves starting from the "portal" home page since for most people, that does double-duty as the main Yahoo search page despite the existance of search.yahoo.com).
Insight Into Driving Network Traffic: The report notes that Yahoo manages to drive 8 percent of searches back into its own network. Google drives 7 percent of its traffic to Google-related sites, with Google Images the top destination among these, getting 5 percent of the share.
Yahoo Local Greater Than Google Local: Yahoo's local search had four times the visits of Google's local search, though Google's service has grown 61 percent over the past six months. Local searchers are also slightly more likely to be female.
Yahoo & Ask Local For Maps: Yahoo and Ask were found to be driving most traffic to their map sites, while Google was driving traffic to a range of sources, including Yahoo and SuperPages.
Query Terms: Queries are generally one to two words long except for Ask, where its history of encouraging users to ask questions generates queries typically three or more words in length.
Top Queries: Navigational terms rule on the search engines, with top queries often those for sites such as eBay or Mapquest. Top term on Yahoo and MSN? The name of their chief rival -- Google! Ask is notable for not having its top list be dominated by navigational queries.
Demographics: Google is slightly more male in terms of users, with Ask being more female. Yahoo is more younger; MSN more older, in terms of audience profiles. Google's got the highest number of visitors with incomes over $100,000.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:54 AM | Permalink

August 11, 2005

Hitwise Reports that Google Continues to "Dominate" General Web Search While Yahoo Number One in Local Search

Tekrati does a nice job summarizing a recent Hitwise Market Snapshot that shows Google still "dominates" consumer web search but Yahoo is the leader in local search.

From the summary:

Google, Yahoo Search and MSN Search -- accounted for 93.5 percent of U.S. Internet searches across major engines in July 2005. Amidst that triumvirate?s consolidation of search power still lies Google, which claimed 59.2 percent of searches across all major engines in the same month, a 14 percent increase in share versus year-ago. Yahoo! Search and MSN search respectively captured 28.8 percent and 5.5 percent share of searches in July 2005.
While Google may dominate general search, attention is directing toward local search, and Yahoo! is the leading service in that arena. Visits to Yahoo! Local (local.yahoo.com) were 4.4 times greater than visits to Google Local (local.google.com) in July 2005. However, Google Local?s market share increased 61 percent between February 2005 and July 2005, while Yahoo! Local grew 14 percent.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:32 PM | Permalink

July 29, 2005

Big Brother Enters Top Search Term List In UK

HitWise UK sends us news that "big brother" has become the third most searched-for term among all UK web searches, beating out both "easyjet" and "amazon." Based on searches the company has tracked over the past for weeks, ending July 23, 2005, here's the top ten list:

Rank

Search Term

% Share Of All Searches

ebay

0.82%

argos

0.21%

big brother

0.19%

amazon

0.17%

easyjet

0.17%

autotrader

0.14%

ryanair

0.14%

bbc

0.14%

ebay uk

0.14%

tesco

0.11%

How about a little picture on the recent rise of Big Brother, which came into the top ten as of the week ending June 18? OK:

Hey, Danny -- didn't you just say recently that sex terms are always among the most popular? I know Big Brother in the UK has plenty of sex going on, but still -- where are the sex terms?

Adult terms are stripped out of the Hitwise top list. FYI, misspellings are NOT bundled, either. So a search for argus wouldn't equal argos.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:50 AM | Permalink

June 28, 2005

Hitwise: Google Tops In May

New stats now posted from Hitwise show Google has the highest share of visits by US web surfers of all search and directory sites that Hitwise tracked in May 2005.

It's never good to depend too much on month-to-month changes, as I've written before. Nevertheless, both Yahoo and MSN will take heart that the rankings are virtually unchanged from April 2005. Here's a comparison:

Service

4/05

5/05

Change Google

37.8%

38.3%

0.5% Yahoo

18.5%

18.4%

-0.1% MSN

15.8%

15.6%

-0.3%

See the Hitwise Search Engine Ratings page within Search Engine Watch for the full top 10 list in terms of search engine popularity, including how popular image search is. Top portal front page usage is also shown.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:34 AM | Permalink

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