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

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

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

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

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 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

Search continues to shift away from the desktop toward mobile devices. That's one of the conclusions of the just-released Neustar Localeze/15miles/comScore Local Search Study, which is now in its sixth year. This year's study involves a sample of more than 3,000 U.S. adults that say they use the Internet to search for local businesses. Results aren't available online yet, but we'll add a link here when they are. The total number of U.S. searchers using mobile phones grew 26 percent between March 2012 and December 2012, from 90.1 million to 113.1 million searchers. Search on tablets was u [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines | Stats: comScore | Stats: General | Stats: Search Behavior | Top News

ConstantContact's SinglePlatform division has released the results of a new survey of small businesses (SMBs). The "headline" finding is that nearly half (49 percent) say they've never updated their listings online. The survey polled "more than 350" SMBs. Most small businesses are overwhelmed and confused by even basic online marketing. This is reflected in some of the seemingly contradictory findings of the survey: 50 percent of SMBs have seen listings for their business that are not accurate 70 percent of SMBs say they don’t have the time to manage listings on all of the sites t [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Mobile | Google: SEO | Search Engines: Location / Checkin Services | Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines | SEO: Local | SEO: Mobile Search | Stats: General | Stats: Search Behavior | Top News

The Google Shopping gamble paid off – for both Google and e-commerce advertisers who ran product listing ad campaigns last quarter. A  report from Adobe and a study by RKG each highlighted consumer interest and advertiser opportunity in Google product listing ads. Today, Marin Software released findings showing that, after the transition of Google Shopping to an entirely paid model in October, advertisers increased their share of search budgets directed toward product listing ads by nearly 600%. Those advertisers were rewarded with higher click through rates and lower cost per click than [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Search Marketing: Shopping Search Marketing | SEM Industry: Stats | Stats: General | Stats: Spend Projections | Top News

Two reports out this morning from Marin Software and IgnitionOne capture a range of Q4 paid search ad spending data. For purposes of this article I'm going to focus only on the mobile component of the reports. Both show paid search spending on tablets surpassing smartphones. The IgnitionOne report, focused on the US market, shows that mobile devices now account for 18 percent of total paid-search budgets. However in Q4 tablet metrics grew dramatically faster than those for smartphones. Right now IgnitionOne says CPCs are lower on tablets, while impressions and clicks are much higher for tab [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Search Marketing: Mobile | Stats | Stats: General | Stats: Search Behavior | Top News

A new survey from Harris Interactive on behalf of The Search Agency finds, among other things, that large numbers of people in the US don't really understand how Facebook and Google make money. The online survey was conducted in August 2012 with a sample of just over 2,000 adults. The Search Agency (via Harris) asked whether people agreed with the question "I understand how Facebook makes money." A slight majority (54 percent) said that they strongly or somewhat agreed. On the flip side, 46 percent essentially did not understand. However even among the 54 percent who said they understoo [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Google: Web Search | Microsoft: Bing | Stats: General | 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 | Features: Analysis | Google: Trends | Search & Society: General | Stats: General

Google continues to lose marketshare in China after pulling out of China years ago. New market share reports from Marbridge Consulting puts Google in forth place in terms of search market share. Google trails Baidu, Qihoo 360, and Sogou with only 4.72% share in China. Baidu has 72.97%, Qihoo 360 has 9.64% and Sogou has 7.83%. TheNextWeb adds that Google Maps also dropped, now in the 6th position based on China market share. The reason for the drop on the maps side is because of Apple dropping Google Maps in iOS 6 for their own mapping application. Here is the search market share rep [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Google: Outside US | Stats: General | Stats: Popularity | Top News

Google has been pumping out research and speaking at industry trade shows trying to educate advertisers and agencies about the growing importance of mobile in the consumer path to purchase. One of the "best practices" advocated by Google, as well as those experienced with mobile paid search, is to separate PC and mobile campaigns. However new data from Wordstream indicate this is only happening in about 5 percent of cases. Wordstream founder and CTO Larry Kim looked at the company's huge trove of data and determined that 55 percent of paid-search campaigns target mobile devices. Given th [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Mobile | Google: Web Search | Stats: General | Stats: Search Behavior | Top News

Yesterday at SMX East, during the "How to Play in the Exploding Mobile Ads Universe" session, Telmetrics' Bill Dinan previewed some of the mobile restaurant search data being released this morning. This is the third tranche from a study conducted earlier this year by Nielsen and commissioned by Telmetrics and xAd. The research was based on "an online survey of 1,500 US smartphone and tablet users and actual observed consumer behaviors from Nielsen’s Smartphone Analytics Panel of 6,000 Apple and Android users." Accordingly it reflects both attitudes and actual user behavior. My write-ups o [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Stats | Stats: General | Stats: Search Behavior | Top News

Hey Emma Watson fans: Be really careful about clicking on those search results. McAfee, the security technology company, says Watson is 2012's most dangerous celebrity to search for -- replacing Heidi Klum, who held that title last year. According to McAfee's Most Dangerous Celebrities study, searches related to Watson have a 12.6 percent chance of leading to a malicious website that offers spyware, adware, viruses and the like. When it comes to dangerous search terms, the landscape is decidedly female. The only guy to make McAfee's top 20? That would be Jimmy Kimmel, who ranks number [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Features: Analysis | Search & Society: General | Stats: General | Stats: Search Behavior