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 | Featured | Google | Google: Web Search | Microsoft: Bing | Search & Society | Stats: General | Stats: Popularity | Yahoo | Yahoo: Search

Bing's U.S. search market share has hit another all-time high, passing 17 percent for the first time. It gained at Google's expense, as the search giant slipped six-tenths of a percentage point last month. That's from comScore's April 2013 qSearch report, just out today. For the month, comScore says there were slightly more than 20 billion "core" searches (mobile not included), a small decline from 20.4 billion in March. Google accounted for 66.5 percent of core searches in April, down 0.6 from March's 67.1 percent. Google's loss was matched by gains at Bing and Yahoo. Bing's share rose [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Stats: comScore | Stats: Popularity

A local SEO industry survey, managed by SEO software company Brightlocal, revealed that the most in-demand SEO services are on-site SEO and Google+ optimization. Conducted between January 20 and February 20 of this year, the survey evaluated the health and nature of the local SEO industry by focusing on five key areas: agency size and turnover, clients and industries, marketing and sales, services and tasks, and future outlooks. The majority of survey respondents included freelancers, small digital agencies and web designers, with a total of 1,409 respondents. On-site SEO and Google+ opt [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Search Marketing: Local Search Marketing | SEM Industry | SEM Industry: Outsourcing | SEO: Local | Stats: General

For enterprise SEM practitioners looking to set budgets or otherwise anticipate their needs in the space for the months and years ahead, it's been a particularly difficult time to get a read on how the industry is really trending. Conflicting data and opinions abound; new threats to the hegemony of search, real or just perceived, continue to spring up; and, there are times when all of us may wonder just how much the numbers are actually changing and whether we should be concerned. Case in point: comScore recently showed U.S. core searches increasing 11% year-over-year to hit an all-time [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Enterprise SEM | Google: AdWords | Google: Mobile | Microsoft: Bing Ads | Search Ads | Search Ads: Mobile Search | Stats: Search Behavior

Stop a search marketer on the street, whether a grizzled veteran or relative newcomer, and ask him/her to list the top goals of ranking in the search results; they will talk to you about traffic, revenue and conversions. Likewise, in reflecting what is top of mind for search marketers, a perusal of industry websites shows a majority of articles focused on the same. Far less covered -- whether research, POVs or even "thinking-out-loud" blog posts -- is content focused on other benefits of appearing in the search results, such as brand development. For decades, marketers have invested in g [...]

Related Topics: All Things SEO | Channel: SEO | Search Marketing: Branding | SEO - Search Engine Optimization | Stats | Stats: Search Behavior

For the 20th anniversary of CERN making Web technology available to anyone royalty-free, the European science lab has restored the very first website to its original location. Could today's search engines of Google and Bing, which didn't exist when the site was first posted, find it now? Time for a test. The answer turns out to be tricky. Searching For The Page By URL The easiest test was to see which of them had the page listed by searching for it by its URL, which is: http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html It looks like this, by the way: Google found it when I searc [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Features: Analysis | Google: Web Search | Microsoft: Bing | Stats: Freshness | Stats: History | Stats: Relevancy | Top News

Google is introducing "The Customer Journey to Online Purchase" analytics report today, a new benchmarking tool that provides insight into the various elements impacting a single campaign. You can learn more about it in a short write-up at our sister site, Marketing Land: New Google Analytics Path To Purchase Report Provides Benchmark Data On 11 Different Industries. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Google: Analytics | SEM Tools: Web Analytics | Stats: General | Stats: Search Behavior

It's April, which means that spring is here and the first quarter of 2013 is in the books! The birds are chirping, the flowers are blooming, and the ads are clicking. Aren't the landing pages pretty at this time of year? At Kenshoo, we sit on some massive data sets that we share each quarter in our Global Search Advertising Trends reports. You can download the full Q1 2013 report here; but, let's dive in and look at some of the highlights. Note: In the report, you can read about our methodology to see how we arrived at these numbers, so I won't go into that here. Just know that our [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Enterprise SEM | Search Ads | SEM Industry | SEM Industry: Stats | Stats | Stats: General

Global search ad spend rose 15% in Q1 2013 versus the previous year, according to the Kenshoo Global Search Advertising Trends report released today. That rise in spend was driven largely by a 62% increase in click-through rates and a 21% increase in clicks year-over-year.   U.S. ad spend rose 24%, spurring the overall global increase. However, PPC spend fell 4% in the E.U. and 11% in the U.K. CPCs fell in both the U.S. and U.K and remained relatively flat for continental Europe. CPCs in the U.S. continued to be higher, at $0.44, than the U.K. at $0.38 USD. The report highlights th [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Stats | Stats: General | Stats: Spend Projections | Top News

To give further credence to consumers' love of "second-screening" and why marketers should be salivating at the opportunities these new habits behold, Nielsen released stats on just what consumers are doing on their tablets while watching TV. Social networking sites are users' top destinations, but consumers also seek out information about what they are watching -- and they are buying. One out of five looked up product information for an ad they saw on TV. A full third shopped on their tablets while watching TV. Interestingly, there isn't a big gap between those who look up information a [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Stats | Stats: Search Behavior

What is the future of marketing? You can almost hear "Science!" as intoned by a popular 80's song by Thomas Dolby. Across our profession, more and more people are talking about marketing science, scientific marketing, marketing as a science (in contrast to an "art"), and so on. In our digitized and data-deluged world of modern marketing, these phrases resonate. "Yes, marketing is more of a science today." That just feels like a true statement, doesn't it? But what do we really mean by it? What makes an approach to marketing scientific? In what ways does it differ from marketing as an [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search & Conversion | Search Marketing | Stats

Efforts by Bing Ads to increase click volumes and gain market share from Google appear to be paying off, according to a report by The Search Agency. The Search Agency's Quarterly State of Paid Search, released today, shows Bing's share of spend rose 3.6% year-over-year to 21%. The market share grab comes after four consecutive quarters of a relatively stable split between Google and Bing. Bing spend rose 42% driven by a 7.4% increase in CPC year-over-year and a 46% increase in CTR year-over-year. Google’s spend increased 17.1% year-over-year. Bing’s clicks increased both year- [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Microsoft: Bing Ads | Search Ads | Stats | Top News

An online survey examining SEO assumptions by SurveyMonkey found that the No. 1 reason users would block a website from their search results was if the website contained too many ads. If given an option to remove a website from future search results, 68 percent of the respondents said they would block a website because it had too many ads, while 60 percent claimed they would block a site because of poor quality content. Respondents were more forgiving of typos and grammar mistakes, with 26 percent claiming to block a website with typos and only 23 percent blocking a website containing bad g [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | Google: Web Search | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Bing SEO | Stats: General | Stats: Search Behavior

In a recent study by SurveyMonkey examining SEO assumptions, respondents were given two search result pages, one with a page header labeled "Google" and the other with a page header labeled "Bing," and asked which page of results they preferred. Even when the page header labels were swapped, more users preferred the Google search results. Of 641 survey respondents, 379 participants received a survey asking which of two search result pages they preferred. One page of results for the term "file taxes" included true Google results and the other page included true Bing results. The Google page [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Search Quality Raters | Google: Web Search | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Bing SEO | Search Engines | SEO: Domain Names & URLs | Stats: Popularity | Stats: Search Behavior | Top News

Google dropped a few percentage points while Bing and Yahoo each gained a couple ... but the bigger statistic from comScore's monthly U.S. search rankings for March is that desktop search activity reached an all-time high. The company's latest report estimates that there were just under 20.4 billion searches during March -- that's desktop-only, and it's an 11 percent increase from February. It's also the first time comScore has ever estimated search activity be above 20 billion searches in a month. The previous record of 19.5 billion was set in January. According to comScore's measuremen [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Stats: comScore | Stats: Popularity | Top News

Are those sweet efficiencies early adopters of AdWords product listing ads saw in their holiday numbers coming to an end?  Well, CPCs are rising, but ROI is still solid. RKG's Q1 Digital Marketing Report finds that as more merchants come on board, product listing ad CPCs are now just 10% lower than comparable text ads. Yet, even with the stiffer competition, RKGs client base saw 22% higher ROI from PLAs than non-brand text ads in Q1. PLAs garnered 33% of their e-commerce clients' Google search spend, a sharp increase from Q4. Product Listing Ads   PLAs helped drive up Google' [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Microsoft: Bing Ads | Search Marketing: General | Stats: General | Stats: Spend Projections

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

The proliferation of tablet devices has begun to lower the value of the tablet segment overall for paid search marketers, even as competition heats up. That's according to the Q1 Digital Marketing Report by RKG, which finds that tablets generated 15% lower revenue per click than traditional computers. Revenue Per Click by Device Type vs Computer "Discrepancy is More Likely to Increase" Much has been made of Google's decision to combine tablets and PCs in enhanced campaigns. The RKG  report is not alone in challenging Google's claim that usage behavior and ad performance among the devices [...]

Related Topics: 1 | Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords: Enhanced Campaigns | Microsoft: Bing Ads | Search Marketing: Mobile | SEM Industry: Stats | Stats: Search Behavior | Stats: Spend Projections | Top News

The data analytics firm Chitika has created an infographic showing search volume for the final four teams in this weekend's NCAA basketball championship tournament. If search interest has any influence on game results, we'll all be watching the University of Louisville men's basketball team beating Michigan next Monday night at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. Louisville also ranks No. 1 for most searched teams according to Bing's Search Blog. Leading the list of most searched players is Kevin Ware, the Louisville player who suffered a severe lower leg injury during the Louisville-Duke game on [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Search Engines | Stats: General | Stats: Popularity

Marketers may want to add BigWebStats to their lists of research tools. The new site pulls a wide range of information on just about any website. Enter a URL and BigWebStats aggregates data from several sources across the Web and displays it in one page, including visitors insights, social engagement, domain and technology information and SEO stats. SEO related information includes H tag counter, a snapshot of indexed pages on Google, Yahoo and Bing, and backlink history, which is pulled from MajesticSEO.  Other data sources include SimilarSites, Whois, and Social Buzz. The service reli [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features: Analysis | SEM Tools | SEO - Search Engine Optimization | Stats: General