Hitwise’s Search Success estimates seem to help tell a more accurate story than these ridiculous page view counts that should have been abandoned years ago. Again, if an SEO firm is ill-advised to use page views as a KPI, why in the world would anyone in this industry endorse the use of page views as a search market share metric?

The dip in Google traffic appears to be due mostly to the Panda algorithm update — searchers are finding satisfactory results more quickly and easily (and I note that in years past I have often complained that page view counts for “search market share” were inflated in part by search frustration).

There is some indication, also, that Bing (and maybe Yahoo!, although the ComScore data contradicts Hitwise) may have increased its own page views (through methods documented here on Search Engine Land).

Honestly, the only people who should care about these page view estimates are companies buying banner ads on Google.com.

And you CAN’T buy banner ads on Google.com…