A newly released white paper from Google claims the search engine can predict a movie's opening weekend performance within 92 percent accuracy based on search query and paid click volume. After evaluating search and paid click data for 99 top box office films in 2012, Google correlated the data with each film's success by analyzing search and paid click volume during the seven day window prior to the film's release date. According to Google, if 250,000 more search queries happen for one film over a similar film, the film with the most search queries is likely to generate up to $4.3 milli [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google | Google: AdWords | Google: Analytics | Google: General | Google: YouTube & Video | Search & Society: General | Top News

Google Trends has started a new monthly "spirit of the times" Top Charts feature with more than 40 categories of Top 10 lists that include people, places and things ranked by search interest. According to today's post from Google's Official Blog, the Top Charts go back to 2004 and will continue to be updated monthly. You can find the Top Charts link from the Google Trends homepage on the left-hand side of the site. While Google states that the Top Charts include their most accurate search volume rankings, they note that no algorithm is perfect and anomalies in the data may be found on rare [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search Marketing | Google: Trends | Search & Society: General

Using data from more than 35 million search queries performed in 2012, SEO company WebpageFX  set out to determine search engine market share by state for Google, Bing and Yahoo. According to their study, Google dominates across the country, taking 70 percent or more of search engine market share in nearly all 50 states. Delaware represented the only state where Google won less than 70 percent of searches, with 69.49 percent market share. While Google won more than 80 percent of the market in many states, Hawaii, Oregon, District of Columbia, Massachusetts, and Colorado led in Googl [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Google | Google: Web Search | Microsoft: Bing | Search & Society | Stats: General | Stats: Popularity | Yahoo | Yahoo: Search

Following today's explosions at the Boston Marathon, social media channels were immediately swamped with reports, graphic images and videos from the scene. Race officials immediately held runners on course, and canceled the rest of the event. During tragic events like this, it's hard to determine what's official and real information until it is verified by law enforcement. Until then, people are searching for the status of runners while cell networks are overloaded and/or shut down due to on-going security concerns. Family/friends of runners have been able to use checkpoint tracking to see [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Search & Society: General

Mobile-location based advertising network xAd joined forces with mobile call measurement provider Telmetrics to release their first U.K. Mobile Path-to-Purchase study, focusing on U.K. mobile search behavior. Conducted by Nielsen, the online study, surveyed 1,500 U.K. smartphone and tablet users to measure consumer search activity on mobile devices. While price comparisons and reviews were the leading mobile research activities in the U.K., users performing restaurant and automotive searches on smartphones were most often looking for location or local contact information. According t [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Search & Society: General | Search Ads: Mobile Search | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines | Search Marketing: Mobile | Stats: General | Stats: Search Behavior | Top News

Developed by John Matherly, Shodan is a search engine designed to help users find certain pieces of software, determine which applications are most popular, identify anonymous FTP servers, or investigate new vulnerabilities and what hosts they could infect. It also serves as a window into millions of unsecured online connections. According to an article on CNN Money, Shodan runs nonstop, collecting data from approximately 500 million connected devices and services each month. Through a simple search on Shodan, a user can identify a number of systems that either have no security measures in [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Legal: Crawling & Indexing | Legal: Privacy | Legal: Security | Search & Society | Search Engines | Search Engines: Meta Search Engines | Search Features: Safety

Bing is hopping on the April Fools' Day joke bandwagon later than Google and even Wolfram Alpha, but it's taking a swing at Google in one of the two gags that it just announced via separate blog posts. Bing Basic On its main search blog, Bing has an esoteric blog post that talks about "Bing Basic," a feature that lets searchers experience Bing's home page without the large, colorful and almost always beautiful, clickable photos. The post says Bing is running a test today and, if you know "a certain telltale query," this is what you'll experience: ...you'll get something a little more bla [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Features: General | Microsoft: Bing | Search & Society: April Fool's | Top News

Move over there just a little bit, Google. Even Wolfram Alpha, the computation knowledge engine (as it calls itself), is getting in on the April Fools' Day gags. For at least a day, the company has announced that it's now the "handwritten knowledge engine." Ask it any question, and Wolfram Alpha shows results that look like someone printed them by hand. Google did something similar a couple years ago when it used the Comic Sans font to display all of its search results. So far this year, nothing from Bing, Yahoo, Blekko or DuckDuckGo for April Fools' Day. Then again, it's stil [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Search & Society: April Fool's | Wolfram Alpha

April Fool's Day is pretty much like a national ... err, international holiday for everyone that works for Google. It seems that nobody else on the Web takes the tradition of pranks and jokes as seriously as Google does -- just see our coverage from the last few April Fool's Days for proof: Google's Gags Go Worldwide For April Fool's Day 2012 It's Over: Google Has Already Won April Fools Day 2011 Google Books, Google Maps Get 3D View – But Only For April Fool's Day April Fools' Day 2009: Google CADIE & More From Search Industry It may still be March 31st for me, and maybe [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Features: General | Google: Analytics | Google: Docs & Spreadsheets | Google: Gmail | Google: Internet Access | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Marketing | Google: Street View | Google: Trends | Google: Wallet | Google: YouTube & Video | Search & Society: April Fool's | Top News

Once in every five times that someone clicks a search result, it goes to one of five websites: Facebook, YouTube, Yahoo, Wikipedia or Amazon. That leaves about 80 percent of search clicks for the rest of us. Going further, the top 500 websites received almost 50 percent of all clicks from search results, and the top 10,000 websites got almost 75 percent of all search clicks. All of this is according to the 2013 Digital Marketer Report from Experian Marketing Services (Hitwise). The company says that those five sites I listed above combined to get 20.07 percent of all clicks from US [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Video | eBay | Facebook | Features: Analysis | Google: YouTube & Video | Search & Society: General | Stats: Hitwise | Stats: Search Behavior | Top News

When it comes to getting general news and information, consumers worldwide put as much trust in search engines as they do in traditional media -- and more in both than they do in social media. But, the numbers don't portray any single source as highly trusted, which suggests that consumers are at least trying to vet the accuracy and trustworthiness of what they find in today's information-saturated world. The data comes from the recently released 2013 Edelman Trust Barometer, the 13th annual global survey that uses data from "informed publics" -- college-educated individuals in upper inc [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features: Analysis | Google: Knowledge Graph | Google: Web Search | Microsoft: Bing | Search & Society: General | Stats: Search Behavior | Top News

Super Bowl commercials aren't typically about direct purchases. Brands run them to create awareness and buzz and to make us feel all soft and fuzzy towards them through our adorable-foal/hot actor reunion-induced tears (thanks a lot, Budweiser!). For the last five years, I've tracked where advertisers are trying to send viewers, where those viewers are actually going, and in particular, if advertisers are taking full advantage of the furious searching that happens post-game. Both Google Trends and Yahoo data show that even as we turned to Twitter in droves, we also, as in past years, flock [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Features: Analysis | Search & Society | Top News

We hear a lot about how TV viewers often multitask with a second device, followed by evidence such as Twitter hashtag activity and Facebook likes. While we absolutely flocked to Twitter in droves yesterday during the game, we also did had search engines at the ready to provide us with those #infiniteanswers Amy Poehler was looking for in that Best Buy commercial. Most Popular Topic of the Day: Beyonce vs. The Blackout According to the (sadly now significantly scaled back) Google Trends, the popular topic of of Super Bowl Sunday was Beyonce, with over one million searches. Yahoo also found [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Features: Analysis | Search & Society | Top News

Surely every organization managing an event site knows at this point that people want to know what time things start. And that those potential viewers are likely to turn to Google to find out. This year, Google just provides the answer right at the top of the page: February 3rd at 3:30 pacific. Just as we saw last year, the NFL understands what their target audience is looking for and has built a page that provides exactly what they need (that ranks first in the search results), as well as invites them to tour the rest of the site (which gives the NFL the page views they need - win/win!) [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Features: Analysis | Google: Trends | Search & Society | SEO - Search Engine Optimization

Since 2009, I've been writing articles here on Search Engine Land about how Super Bowl commercials influence online behavior and how well (or not) advertisers have taken advantage of that online opportunity. One clear trend has been that each year, these commercials trigger increased online activities. This is both because each year, we are more likely to juggle multiple devices while we watch the game (TV + mobile phones + tablets + laptops +....) and because we have so many more places online to interact. In 2010, we searched for information. In 2011, we went to Facebook and went to Y [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Features: Analysis | Search & Society

With today's instant anywhere-anytime access to Google, Bing and Wolfram Alpha, where searching for information takes a few scant heartbeats via an internet-connected device, some people regard physical libraries as a quaint relics of a forgotten age. But new research from Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project suggests just the opposite: that in fact, libraries are reinventing themselves as vibrant community-based repositories of important and sometimes eclectic print materials, but also offering a wide and creative range of services, access to apps, gadgets community spa [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Features: Analysis | Search & Society | Top News

Journalists call them headlines; SEOs call them titles and headings. Whatever you call them, they're the words that tell someone that your article is what they want to read. Look at Google News any day of the week for examples of headlines that give you absolutely no idea what the article might be about. Search engines don't know what to rank them for; users don't know whether to click. One trend I watch is that of searchers asking what time things start. For any event, you can be sure that searchers will take to Google to find out the start time. I chronicle this every year, for instance, [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features: Analysis | Search & Society: General | SEO: Titles & Descriptions | Top News

Although there's long been a debate over the accuracy of health information online, many U.S. Internet users aren't hesitant to use the Web when they want answers to health-related questions. And rather than dedicated health sites, the vast majority of them begin their research at a search engine. A new study out tonight from the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project says that 72 percent of U.S. Internet users have gone online in the past year specifically for health-related information, and 77 percent of that group says their research started at Google, Bing or another [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Search & Society: General | Search Engines: Health & Medical Search Engines | Stats: Search Behavior | Top News

Don't worry, Google's year in review for 2012 isn't that predictable for the once in a lifetime calendar event. On the official Google 2012 Zeitgeist website, you'll find their biggest list ever published, with a total of 838 lists from 55 countries, covering 1.2 trillion searches done worldwide. Digging in deeper, Google has divided the massive data set into two major buckets: Trending Searches: What was hot in 2012? The "trending" queries are the searches that had the highest amount of traffic over a sustained period in 2012 as compared to 2011. Most Searched: What topped Google’s [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search Marketing | Features: Analysis | Google: Trends | Search & Society: General | Stats: General

Screen related searches are the backbone of Yahoo!'s year in review lists, as actors, actresses, talk show personalities and reality TV celebrities seem to command a bigger presence year after year. In the most popular TV searches on Yahoo! in the US, perennial favorite American Idol dominated top slots in several categories of Yahoo's top search trends for 2012. Interestingly, singer/actress and former American Idol judge J-LO, was the only music personality to appear in the top 10, no mention of fellow exiting co-star, Steven Tyler, though searches for "aerosmith tour" did spike on [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Search & Society: General | Yahoo