We're getting the usual sneak peek at comScore data from financial analysts ahead of the official release tomorrow. In terms of the market-share horse race, Google gained ground vs. last month. Bing was flat; AOL and especially Ask gained as well. Sadly, Yahoo experienced another month of decline -- to its lowest market share in memory. And now, behold the September comScore numbers: Google: 66.7 percent (66.4 percent in August) Bing: 15.9 percent (15.9 percent in August) Yahoo: 12.2 percent (12.8 percent in August) Ask: 3.5 percent (3.2 percent in August) AOL: 1.8 percent (1.7 [...]

Related Topics: AOL | Ask: Web Search | Channel: Strategy | Google: Web Search | Microsoft: Bing | Stats: Compete | Top News | Yahoo: Search

Compete.com has weighed in with its US search engine market share statistics, and the results mirror what others have been reporting in recent months: small, slow losses in Google's market share, and correspondingly slow gains for Bing. According to Compete's research, Google-powered search (which includes both Google and AOL) had 68.3% of the US market in August, down from 69% in July. Bing-powered search -- Bing and Yahoo combined -- held 31.7% of the market in August, up from 31% in July. Compete's chart also shows continued rises in search activity, with overall query volume up 1 [...]

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

Last week both comScore and Hitwise showed gains for Bing. Meanwhile Google was off 2% according to both metrics firms. Today Compete released data that confirm the direction of the earlier figures: Bing up, Google off slightly: According to Compete, both Google and Yahoo very modestly lost share, AOL and Ask were flat while Bing gained: All engines except Bing experienced a decline in unique visitors in February, with Bing seeing a 7.6% increase in UVs MOM Bing Powered engines (Yahoo! and Bing) continued to increase its share of market to 30.8% Bing continues to show increment [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Stats: Compete | Stats: comScore | Stats: Hitwise

Ahead of their official release, financial analysts released comScore's December search data. Total search query volume, minus "contextual search" (slideshows), was reportedly up 24 percent vs. a year ago for a total of 18.2 billion monthly queries. Here are the market share figures: Google -- 66.6 percent (record high for Google in comScore's numbers) Yahoo -- 16 percent (down from 16.4 percent in Nov) Bing -- 12.0 (up from 11.8 percent in November) Ask -- 3.5 percent (down slightly) AOL -- 1.9 percent (an historic low) None of these figures include mobile query volumes, which [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Stats: Compete | Top News

comScore's out with new search market share figures. Yahoo's up, but did it "game" its growth with new navigational changes? Gaming figures is nothing new. But even if Yahoo effectively did, it's the search volume -- the number of searches -- that people should care more about in deciding who's "winning" and "losing" when it comes to search. Hint: Google dominates. Below, a look at the importance of search volume plus some background on gaming stats and the complexities of comparing figures. Caveats To Live & Love I've been covering search share figures for a long time. A very long t [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Features: Analysis | Stats: Compete | Stats: comScore | Stats: Hitwise | Stats: NetRatings | Stats: Popularity | Top News

According to November comScore data (published by TechCrunch) Google News is the second largest online news property in the world in terms of traffic. Yahoo ranks as the top global news site. Here's the partial comScore list: Yahoo News Google News New York Times sites CNN China’s QQ.com BBC MSN In the US Yahoo still ranks as number one but Google News reportedly falls down the list below the traditional news domains, such as NY Times and CNN. However, over at Nielsen (via Editor & Publisher) the numbers appear to be quite different than the comScore data above -- espe [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Google: News | Google: Outside US | Search Engines: News Search Engines | Stats: Compete | Stats: comScore | Stats: Hitwise | Stats: NetRatings | Stats: Popularity | Yahoo: News

The US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) issued warning letters issued in late March, 2009 to a number of big pharmaceutical companies, saying that their search ads were misleading and didn't contain the required disclosure information mandated by US federal regulations. As one might have expected this caused the companies to temporarily pull their SEM campaigns and resulted in a "59% drop in sponsored link exposures," according to comScore: An analysis of exposure to branded URLs within comScore’s data revealed that substantial declines occurred immediately following the letters being s [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Stats: Compete

Yesterday comScore reported search numbers for August. What they show is growth in overall search volume, including at Google sites (except YouTube). Google has 2.5 times the search volume as Yahoo and Microsoft combined. But Microsoft's Bing also grew its share of the overall US search market from 8.9 percent in July to 9.3 percent in August. Here are the charts: In the "expanded view" of search, what stands out are the following: Search volume declines at eBay, AOL and MySpace Growth at Bing/Microsoft and dramatic growth at Facebook (20 percent vs. July) All the typic [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Stats: Compete | Stats: Size

A report analyzing traffic and click-through rates from ad network Chikita finds that "Bing users are over 50% more likely to click an ad on your site than Google users." What this means, according to the post, is those who arrive at third party sites via Bing click more frequently on ads on those sites than those coming through Google. TechCrunch offers a bit more detail and speculation about why this might be (i.e., "the law of large numbers"). According to Chikita, the respective click rates are: Google: .97 percent Yahoo: 1.24 percent Bing: 1.5 percent Bing appears has made some [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Microsoft: Business Issues | Microsoft: Partnerships | Stats: Compete | Stats: comScore | Stats: General | Stats: Hitwise | Stats: Search Behavior | Stats: Size | Top News | Yahoo: Display Ads | Yahoo: Partnerships | Yahoo: Search Ads

Now a third major ratings service has released search engine share figures for June 2009, and like the others, they show that Bing made only a tiny gain in the wake of its launch and major ad campaign. The comScore figures have gone out to the financial analyst community, and the comScore press release with them usually arrives a week after that. But Mark Mahaney at Citigroup gave permission to cite figures in his report, which includes analysis for investors (too early to call, Bing has a "solid product" but faces "large uphill battle"). For June 2009, here's the search share handle [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Features: Analysis | Microsoft: Marketing | Stats: Compete | Stats: comScore | Stats: Popularity | Top News

A second major ratings service, Compete, has now released search engine share figures for June 2009 showing Microsoft's new Bing service making a tiny gain. That, following Hitwise's mixed stats from last week, keeps Bing in "it's too early to say" territory. Meanwhile, Bing itself says at one month old, unique users up 8%. Here are the figures showing share of searches each search engine handled in the United States, for June 2009 from Compete: Normally, I'm loathe to do month-to-month comparisons, because they can be so easily skewed by many factors and not be indicative of a [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Features: Analysis | Microsoft: Bing | Stats: Compete | Stats: Popularity | Top News

Just in from Hitwise, the first month-to-month figures since the launch of Bing. And the figures show Bing has both gained and dropped in the same month. Confusing? Yes it is! Here are the month-to-month figures, percentage of searches each search engine handled in the United States: You can see that from May to June, Google's up to 74.04%. Yahoo's up, to 16.19%. And Bing? Down! It dropped from 5.64% in May to 5.25% in June. Despite this, Hitwise put out its emailed release saying "Bing Growing at 25 Percent Rate in June 2009." How's that work? Let's go to the second chart, week-b [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Features: Analysis | Stats: Compete | Stats: Hitwise | Stats: Popularity | Top News

More early stats are coming in on how searchers are reacting to the Bing launch. comScore shows Microsoft's Bing search engine continuing to make gains, but Compete shows things remain largely the same. From comScore, the latest stats show that "searcher penetration" has climbed from 13.7% in the week before it launched, to 15.8% during the launch week to 16.7% for the week after launch. The share of search results pages have risen from 9.1% to 12.1% over the same period. From the comScore press release: Work Week 5/25/09-5/29/09 6/1/09-6/5/09 6/8/09-6/12/09 Searcher [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Features: Analysis | Microsoft: Bing | Stats: Compete | Stats: comScore | Stats: Hitwise | Stats: NetRatings | Stats: Popularity | Top News

We saw the same headline, based on data issued by StatCounter from Thursday. These data reportedly show that yesterday the share of searches went like this: Google: 71.47 percent Bing: 16.28 percent Yahoo: 10.22 percent On a global basis the company said it saw a similar trend: Google: 87.62 percent Bing: 5.62 percent Yahoo: 5.13 percent To get a reality check on these numbers and discover whether Bing had in fact surpassed Yahoo we reached out to Hitwise, Nielsen, comScore and Compete. We're still waiting to get data or updates from these sources. But the charts and [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Features: Analysis | Microsoft: Bing | Stats: Compete | Stats: comScore | Stats: Hitwise | Stats: NetRatings | Stats: Popularity | Top News | Yahoo: Search

Compete.com says we spent a lot of time searching for information about entertainers, TV, and taxes during January. The terms "rihanna" and "chris brown" are Nos. 1 and 3 according to their data, with "irs.gov," "hulu," and "american idol" rounding out the top five. On the flip side of the coin, "circuit city" and "peanut butter recall" were the two biggest decliners in search activity. You can see the full versions of both charts on the Compete.com blog. [...]

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

With 2008 behind us, I wanted to look back and plot how search engine market share changed over the year in the United States. No surprises here. Pick your numbers, Google grew and grew. Yahoo and Microsoft dropped by lately have leveled off. Before we do the pretty pictures, I'll repeat my standing philosophy about search market share figures: Avoid drawing conclusions based on month-to-month comparisons. Lots of things can cause one month’s figures to be incomparable to another month. It’s better to see the trend across multiple months in a row. Avoid drawing conclusions b [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Features: Analysis | Stats: Compete | Stats: comScore | Stats: Hitwise | Stats: NetRatings | Stats: Popularity | Top News

As part of my Compete: Google Keeps Stomping The Others In Search Traffic article earlier this week, I posted the exact rules that Compete uses to calculate search share, along with commentary on why digging into this is becoming increasingly important. A reader noted the rules didn't seem right. As a result, Compete stepped up and recalculated things -- causing Yahoo's search search and volume for May 2008 to rise significantly (from 13.3% to 18.6%). Perhaps good news to late for those departing executives (and see here and here). I've got nothing but kudos for Compete sharing this level of [...]

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

The latest search engine share stats for May 2008 from Compete show Google hitting yet again another high. Let's do the numbers, including the debate on whether Microsoft Live Search Club searches should be counted plus how everyone might start generating queries in new ways. Here's the rundown for May 2008, for the share of total searches each search engine handled for the United States: Google: 71.5% Yahoo: 13.3% Microsoft Live + Live Search Club: 10.6% (Microsoft Live: 7.9%) (Microsoft Club Live: 2.6%) Ask: 3.0% AOL: 1.2% In the pie chart above, I've shown slices for Microsoft Live a [...]

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

With the latest search popularity stats now in from Hitwise, Nielsen, comScore, and Compete, it's time to pit them against each other and see what they agree -- and don't agree -- about in terms of search engine popularity. Why not show a full year's worth of data? Ratings methodology changes mean I can only go back to June 2007 for comScore and October 2007 for Nielsen. Normally I would also show raw number of searches in addition to search share. See the caveats section below which explains why this is important. However, I don't have Compete figures this month. Without them, I didn't wa [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Stats: Compete | Stats: comScore | Stats: Hitwise | Stats: NetRatings | Stats: Popularity

Compete makes it a quadfecta! No real surprise, the latest search engine share stats out from Compete show Google has hit a new high -- just as did previous stats out this month from Hitwise, Nielsen and comScore. Plus, an interesting look at how much search traffic Microsoft's Live Search Club generates. NOTE: ON THE PIE CHART ABOVE, AOL'S LABEL IS SHOWN OVER THE "ASK" SLICE AND THE ASK FIGURE SHOULD BE 3.5%. THE PIE SLICE PROPORTIONS THEMSELVES ARE CORRECT. SORRY I DON'T HAVE TIME TO FIX THE LABELS NOW! Here's the rundown for April 2008: Google: 68.9% Yahoo: 14.8% Microsof [...]

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