When I did my Ratings Service Faceoff: Search Share Compared, June 2007 To March 2008 post last week, I noted that Microsoft had an odd increase according to Compete for March 2008. The company now says this was due to Live Search Club traffic that it shouldn't have counted. Microsoft's US share for March 2008 drops from 10.2% to 8.5% as a result. From Compete's blog post: As March search stats were published by the other major third party measurement companies over the past few weeks I started to get a little worried about our post from a couple of weeks ago. So we decided to go a little [...]

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

I've now compiled the latest search popularity stats from Hitwise, Compete, comScore, and Nielsen Online. That means it's time to put them all together once again, to see what a "panel" of ratings services agree on -- and don't agree on -- 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. Also, in terms of raw number of searches, Hitwise doesn't report these, so they aren't on the number of searches charts below. Services shown in the charts blow [...]

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

Having covered Hitwise stats yesterday, today I move on to the latest stats from Compete on search engine share in the United States for March 2008. Unlike Hitwise, they show Google taking a very slight dip last month, with Microsoft getting a slight rise. But while Google's percentage share dropped, on a number of searches basis it hit a new high. The four major search engines stack up as follows: Google: 69.4% Yahoo: 14.8% Microsoft: 10.2% Ask: 3.7% POSTSCRIPT:Compete counted searches in March from Club Live that it thought it was filtering out, which inflated the Microsoft figures. I [...]

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

Andrew Girdwood notes that Compete.com was purchased by Taylor Nelson Sofres (TNS) for $75 million. TNS's release reports that Compete.com's 2007 revenue was "$14.9 million, over 50 per cent higher than in the previous year." TNS will pay in deferred cash payments throughout now and 2010, up to a maximum of $75 million. David Lowden, Chief Executive of TNS, said: This acquisition is an important move for TNS that builds on our ability to help clients understand consumer behaviour in the new and highly complex digital world. Compete has built a world-class digital intelligence capability [...]

Related Topics: Business Issues: Acquisitions & Investments | Channel: Strategy | Stats: Compete

I've now compiled the latest search popularity stats from Nielsen, comScore, Hitwise, and Compete. That means it's time to put them all together, to see what a "panel" of ratings services agree on -- and don't agree on -- in terms of search engine popularity. Ordinarily, I'd love to cover an entire year's worth of data from each service. Unfortunately, I've previously written how changes in rating methodology mean I can only go back six months for comScore and two months for Nielsen, at the moment. I can go back a full year for Compete and Hitwise, but when doing comparisons, I l [...]

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

Nearly done with today's search popularity stats review. Previously, I've covered the latest stats from Nielsen, comScore, and Hitwise. Now it's time for Compete. Like the others, it puts Google tops. Unlike the others, it's far more positive about Microsoft's share and negative about Yahoo. The Compete stats are here, showing the share of all searches handled in November 2007 by the top four major search engines: Google: 68.9% Yahoo: 17.4% Microsoft: 9.2% Ask: 3.9% Here are the numbers in pie chart format: Here's a look at Compete search share stats for the past year: Google comes in [...]

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

This Compete blog post argues that most of the search query volume at the major search engines is driven by a relatively small number of search engine users: power searchers. According to Compete, "[T]he top 1% of searchers performs a full 13% of all searches in a given month." Breaking this out by engine, Compete says, "70% of search queries in September were performed by 20% of Google searchers. For Yahoo! the concentration increased to 73% and for MSN/Live searchers 75% of the queries were performed by the top 20%." There's more analysis that needs to be done, especially regarding the SEM [...]

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

Compete is out with its latest search marketshare report for June 2007, showing that MSN/Windows Live Search has posted a dramatic rise since last month. This appears to be do to the Live Search Club promotion that's going on. Below, a look at the trend, a history of how giveaways for search have and haven't worked, as well as some revisiting to past issues with Compete's figures. First the figures. Below is the share of searches in the United States estimated to happen at each service, based on the ISP data, traffic panel data and toolbar tracking information that Compete gathers: You can [...]

Related Topics: Business Issues: General | Channel: Strategy | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Marketing | Stats: Compete | Stats: Popularity