Asked repeatedly about CPC rates, search volumes and various percentages of queries and revenues Gundotra declined to offer those specifics but did say that mobile search query growth was “dramatically higher” (from a smaller base) than PC search growth. He added that Google’s mobile traffic growth has been 5X over the past two years:

These growth curves make sense given the relative maturity levels of the markets and also the rise of smartphones, which now represent almost 20% of the US handset market and a much larger percentage of new handset sales. Gundotra explained, as he has in the past, that mobile search is largely “additive” to PC search. He pointed out that mobile queries spike when people are away from their desks — during lunch, on the weekends, etc.

An unrelated data slide from Compete illustrates that much of smartphone activity happens during “downtime,” “waiting in lines,” at home or during leisure time.

Gundotra showcased Google’s various advertising programs and options in mobile:

Gundotra also discussed Google’s relatively new Click to Call program and echoed that this delivering “a call for the price of a click.” He offered that there was considerable advertiser interest in the program.

During the Q&A session Gundotra was joined by Android VP Mario Queiroz and Google CFO Patrick Pichette. There were questions about the future apps vs. the mobile browser, Android app store growth, the Nexus One, Google’s recent “blue dot” local inventory program, the Japanese market as a model for the West and AdMob, among other areas. There were few specifics revealed and Google wouldn’t discuss AdMob because of the regulatory review going on now. However, Gundotra pointed out that a “surprising  number” of people launch their mobile browser and go to Google.com to search.

What this indicates that Google’s brand equity is very strong in mobile and the company can probably expect continued mobile search leadership notwithstanding competitor “default” search deals that exist or may be brewing. Last month Opera said that Google owned about 68 percent of the search query volume that took place through its mobile browsers (which doesn’t consider the iPhone and most Android devices that see greater percentages of Google search).

One of the soundbites from the webcast that is being widely reported is that mobile ad rates would potentially top PC ad rates at some point in the near-term. While possible and a bit of hopeful thinking, that doesn’t entirely make sense given the current market dynamics.

Google doesn’t have a separate bidding queue for mobile (at least right now) so AdWords on the PC and mobile are the same. In terms of display ads, mobile rates were much higher than on the PC in the past but ad rates have come way down over the past year. This is partly because of ad network competition and the fact that consumers are adopting the mobile web faster than advertisers and there are now many more page views than ad inventory to fill them all. For ad rates to increase there will need to be more advertiser demand and more mobile campaigns, which are coming.

Yet the mobile internet and mobile devices will not simply duplicate the PC experience. There will be overlap and similarity but the mobile internet will evolve and the models will diverge to some degree over time as new advertising, transaction and billing models take hold in mobile.

Here are some of the high-level findings from the report:

• 92% get news from multiple platforms on a typical day, with half of those using four to six platforms daily. Fully 59% get news from a combination of online and offline sources on a typical day.  Just over a third (38%) rely solely on offline sources, and 2% rely exclusively on the internet for their daily news.
• 75% of online news consumers say they get news forwarded through email or posts on social networking sites and 52% say they share links to news with others via those means.
• 51% of social networking site (e.g. Facebook) users who are also online news consumers say that on a typical day they get news items from people they follow.
• Most people say they use between two and five online news sources and 65% say they do not have a single favorite website for news.  Some 21% say they routinely rely on just one site for their news and information.
• 33% of cell phone owners now access news on their cell phones.
• 28% of internet users have customized their home page to include news from sources and on topics that particularly interest them.
• 37% of internet users have contributed to the creation of news, commented about it, or disseminated it via postings on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter.

The consumer behavior identified in the report inherently favors aggregators and portals, which can bring together news from multiple sources, rather than individual publications. Hence the frustration and anger of some in the traditional media world at Google (and others to a lesser degree). They have lost control of distribution. And it appears that News Corp. may be poised to express that frustration in the form of a lawsuit against Google, according to New York magazine and CNET.

But what I find most fascinating and useful about the report is what it says about we view and use the internet now. In particular, the use of search engines such as Google received prominent focus in the report. How can we use this report to better understand our online audiences? See the report for full details of the questions and those surveyed. From a search perspective, what I found most interesting about the responses was that:

• Collectively, we tend to assume the information in search results is accurate
• Google is a habit that we not only aren’t likely to break anytime soon, but instead are likely to grow more dependent on
• Our reliance on search-based navigation has leveled the playing field and remains a great way for anyone to reach an audience

On Google and the use of search engines

The survey asked about Nicholas Carr’s assertion that Google makes us stupid. 76% of those asked disagree and think that the internet is enhancing our intelligence. The more information we have access to, the smarter we are. Of course, this view begs the question: doesn’t the validity of this view depend on the quality of the information we have access to? It seems to me in that sense those surveyed reflect our collective assumption that if it’s ranks well on Google, it must be true.

Some studies have shown that searchers put their trust in what results rank highly, although that may be on the decline. The way the experts answered this question, however, implies that overall, we as searchers equate high Google rankings with accuracy. David Ellis, of York University in Toronto sees this tendency in his classroom: “unless pushed in the right direction, students will opt for the top 10 or 15 hits as their research strategy.” Interestingly, other respondents bring up the issue of accurate results not from the perspective that Google and other search engines don’t necessarily rank based on truthfulness, but that searchers might not be searching correctly.

Peter Griffiths, former Head of Information at the Home Office within the Office of the Chief Information Officer, United Kingdom, notes “the potential for stupidity comes where we rely on Google (or Yahoo, or Bing, or any engine) to provide relevant information in response to poorly constructed queries, frequently one-word queries, and then base decisions or conclusions on those returned items.” This sentiment is echoed by Robert Lunn, consultant at FocalPoint Analytics: “there is a big difference with what a world class artist can do with a paint brush as opposed to a monkey. In other words, the value of Google will depend on what the user brings to the game. The value of data is highly dependent on the quality of the question being asked.”

I find it amazing that so much of the  questioning of the value of the information that search engines returned is based on how well we search and not in the search engine’s ability to return truthful results (as opposed to popular or well-optimized ones). Some of those answering did point this out. For instance, Gene Spafford, Purdue University CERIAS, Association for Computing Machinery U.S. Public Policy Council, pointed out:

“Access to more information isn’t enough — the information needs to be correct, timely, and presented in a manner that enables the reader to learn from it. The current network is full of inaccurate, misleading, and biased information that often crowds out the valid information. People have not learned that ‘popular’ or ‘available’ information is not necessarily valid.”

Combine the sense that generally, searchers seem to assume high ranking results are truthful ones with the data showing that searchers trust organic results more than paid ones and a clear case emerges for an investment in organic search for overall brand credibility.

Another telling aspect of both this question and the way in which the experts answered is that in most cases, respondents used “Google” in place of “search engines” or in many cases “the internet”. Google is a habit that most of us don’t plan on breaking any time soon. In fact, the experts surveyed felt we would continue to become more dependent on Google.

On reading and search-based navigation

The report spends a lot of time on the decline of reading and “literary intelligence”. Are we really reading less? And if we are specifically reading fewer books, is that because of the internet or because of video games and TV? According to Patrick Tucker, Senior Editor at The Futurist magazine, “this type of content generation [that is, blogging, commenting, and the like], this method of ‘writing,’ is not only sub-literate, it may actually undermine the literary impulse…. Hours spent texting and emailing, according to this view, do not translate into improved writing or reading skills.”

Another view, however, is that search-based navigation to content (vs. traditional navigation that begins with a reader picking up a printed newspaper or book) provides a level playing field for skilled writers who may not otherwise have found an audience. Fred Stutzman, School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, for instance, noted, “I firmly believe that more people than ever before will be afforded the opportunity to write and create, to find audiences, and engage in content-enhancing feedback loops that will enhance communication.”

On the “next” Google

Susan Crawford, former member of President Obama’s National Economic Council, now on the law faculty at the University of Michigan is “optimistic that Google will get smarter by 2020 or will be replaced by a utility that is far better than Google.” Others surveyed described new ways of searching (perhaps without realizing that’s what they were doing). Rich Osborne, Web Innovation Officer, University of Exeter, for instance, predicted that “it will become commonplace to be able to overlay reviews of a product simply by pointing a screen at it, or check the weather forecast by pointing your phone at the sky.” (And you can do some of that now with products like Google Goggles and Shaazam.)

The report discusses many other issues around the future of the internet, particularly anonymity and privacy. But underlying all of the discussions was the premise that Google is our primary gateway to the content on the internet. Obvious, maybe. But it mostly went unsaid. And that no one needed to say it tells me that the future of the internet, at least for a little while longer, centers on understanding how to be visible in google search results.

Some key takeaways from Conductor’s survey of Fortune 500 search marketing efforts include:

• Only 15% of Fortune 500 companies have “mid to strong presence” in natural search results for the same keywords on which they advertise the most.
• 53% have “no natural search visibility for their most advertised keywords” — meaning they don’t show up in the Top 100 results
• Collectively, the Fortune 500 spent about $3.4 million per day on more than 97,000 keywords, but they show up in the Top 50 of natural search results for only 25% of those keywords

That final statistic — showing up in the Top 50 natural results on 25% of overall keywords — is actually an improvement from the same study a year ago, when Fortune 500 companies only ranked in the Top 50 for 17% of their primary paid keywords.

Conductor worked with SpyFu to analyze the natural search results of the Fortune 500 companies, using the top five traffic-generating URLs for each company and the keywords they advertise on the most.

Here’s the top ten countries chart, which shows the number of searches measured in each country in December 2008 versus December 2009, conducted by those 15 years and older:

The US was ranked tops in both years and grew to 22.7 billion searches in December 2009, a 22% growth rate. China maintained its number two spot with 13.3 billion searches — but it posted the lowest growth of any country in the top 10, only 13%.

Russia had the largest growth, a 92% rise. But with only 3.3 billion searches, it’s also last on the top ten list. Japan is one of the most interesting counties on the list, because it has both a large number of searches — 9.2 billion — and one of the highest growth rates, 48%.

Also notable is Brazil, which is the only country to rise in the overall rankings, from ninth place in 2008 to eighth place in 2009. That nudged Canada into the number nine spot. Both countries had about 3.7 billion searches conducted in December 2009.

Worldwide, there were 131 billion searches conducted globally in December 2009, a 46% growth over the same time last year. On a yearly basis, that’s about 1.5 trillion searches per year. However, that number isn’t precise, because any particular month might have had fewer or greater searches than in December. The 1.5 trillion figure is generated by simply multiplying the December 2009 figure by 12.

What companies are serving all these searches? There’s a top 10 chart for that, too!

Google handled the most searches, 87.8 billion of them.– and also had the largest growth, 58%.

To really understand how huge Google is compared to competitors, of the 131 billion searches that happened overall, Google handled 67% of them. Its closest competitor, Yahoo, handled only 7% of the world’s searches. In addition, Google’s 67% worldwide share is up from 63% of all searches in the world in December 2008.

While Google was serving billions of queries nearly in the triple digits, everyone else was far behind in the single digit range.

Number two Yahoo handled 9.4 billion searches, well back from Google and well back in terms of growth, too — only 13%. That was one of the lowest growth rates for anyone in the top ten list. China-based Baidu also had an extremely small growth rate. While it’s the number four search engine overall, at 8.5 billion searches, it grew only 7%.

In contrast, Microsoft’s new Bing search engine has paid off globally, taking the company to 4.1 billion searches, a solid number four spot, and a huge 70% growth rate. That’s one of the highest growth rates out there. It’s beaten only by Russian search engine Yandex, which grew 91% to 1.9 billion searches.

Also notable are Facebook and eBay. comScore includes any site with significant search activity on these charts, not just sites that are explicitly designed to be search engines. Doing this reflects just how many people conduct searches in beyond the “core” search engines. eBay ranks fifth at 2.1 billion with a 58% growth rate; Facebook handled 1.6 billion searches with a 43% growth rate.

Compare data from November:

And finally, compare comScore’s November search rankings:

I think there can be no argument now that Yahoo has lost ground over the past several months.

The core data comes from CommonCrawl, a non-profit group designed to crawl the web and provide data for anyone to use. Gil Elbaz is both a founder of CommonCrawl and of Factual, a start-up that creates tables of structured information from data found on the open web (see Factual: Parting The Curtains Of The Invisible Web).

Factual found stats such as I cited above after examining 4 million web sites. In particular:

• 28% of sites have Google Analytics on them
• 12% of sites have AdSense
• 5% of sites have EITHER a Twitter or Facebook link but…
• 2% of sites have BOTH a Twitter or Facebook link

There’s also a chart that shows other interesting stats but without precise percentages. I’ll estimate as best I can:

• About 20% of sites have Flash
• About 19% of sites have an RSS feed
• About 6% of sites have a sitemaps file
• About 1% of sites have a Google Webmaster Central verification code
• About 1% of sites have Quantcast tracking code
• About 0.5% of sites have a Creative Commons attribution

One thing unclear is how the stats break down on a page versus web site basis. A web site might have multiple pages. So when a “web site” is said to have AdSense on it, does that mean each page within the site has AdSense code? Or only some of them? It appears a decision was made on a site-by-side basis, with “site” being defined as all the pages within a set domain or subdomain.

Those interested can play with the data themselves. It’s summarized in this very large table at Factual.

CommonCrawl also gets a bit of publicity from this at an interesting time. Earlier this week, Google released a long internal memo talking about how important it was to the company to be open — except in the areas of search and ads:

In many cases, most notably our search and ads products, opening up the code would not contribute to these goals and would actually hurt users. The search and advertising markets are already highly competitive with very low switching costs, so users and advertisers already have plenty of choice and are not locked in.

I’ll likely do my own follow-up post to that memo in the near future. In the meantime, a post I wrote back in 2007 — Google: As Open As It Wants To Be (i.e., When It’s Convenient) — looks at how Google’s claims of being open tend to ring false when open isn’t something it seems to pursue in areas where it is ahead. In part from my post:

That large index gives Google a huge advantage over rivals. It knows more about what’s on the web than anyone else. So why not share? Why not start an Open Index Alliance where there’s a coordinated effort to crawl and index all the documents in the world, allowing anyone to tap into the raw data?

That’s the idea behind CommonCrawl. Maybe as part of being open, Google could get behind the project?

See also Chris Dixon’s post from this week, Google should open source what actually matters: their search ranking algorithm, for related thoughts about Google, search and openness, along with comments from me and others, including the head of Google’s spam fighting team Matt Cutts.

As for ads, see Schmidt: Someday, AdSense Publishers May Know Google’s Cut Of Ad Revenues, from me earlier this year, which looks at how most AdSense publishers have no idea how much money Google keeps back for itself. It’s hard to find an arugment that support not being open about this, in the face of Google’s declared love of open.

Based on “41 million clicks on Google, Yahoo! and Bing during Q3-Q4 of 2008 and 2009,” SearchIgnite found that Bing is doing well with retailers (and e-commerce consumers):

Retailers have spent 47% more on search ads on Bing in Q4 this year than during this same time period in 2008, with Bing now accounting for 8% of all US retailer search spend, compared with only 6% in the first half of Q4 2008. Average order values on Bing are 21% higher than across all engines, which could account for the spend growth.

Compared with Google and Yahoo!, Bing also saw better YoY performance for impressions and clicks.

Source: SearchIgnite, November 2009

Local search marketing firm and platform provider WebVisible showed improvement by Bing and Yahoo vs. Google among small business advertisers. Here are the top-line trends the firm identified in Q3:

• In Q3 2009, Google accounted for 60.4% of search advertising spending. Yahoo! accounted for 26.2%, Bing 10.5% and Ask 2.4%. Google lost 5 points year-over-year (YoY) as spend shifted among the other engines.
• CTR on Bing improved by 76% YoY, while Google CTR increased by 52% in that period. Yahoo! showed the most dramatic improvement in CTR, with a YoY increase of 123%
• Average CPCs are on the rise, with Google up 14% over a year ago. Google’s average CPC was approximately 30% higher than Yahoo! or Bing in Q3 2009.

WebVisible speculates that higher CPCs on Google are contributing to “diversification” of more search ad spending across engines:

Share of Small Business Search Advertising Spend by Search Engine

Source: WebVisible, November 2009

That’s undoubtedly true because WebVisible works with a range of local media companies that manage search campaigns for small business advertisers. Those companies are always seeking to decrease their costs and protect margins.

The company said that “32% of search clicks resulted in a conversion action on an advertiser’s Web site.” Here is the range of actions taken by those clicking-through:

Percent of Converting Clicks Resulting in Action, Q3 2009

Source: WebVisible, November 2009

Nielsen also released its October 2009 stats, showing Google has a 66.1% share, Yahoo has a 15.4% and Microsoft Bing has a 9.7% share. I was unable to find Nielsen’s September report (did they publish one?) but I did find their August report which showed Bing had 10.7% share. In this case, Bing actually decreased in share by 1%, according to Nielsen.

As we always say, looking at these search share reports month-to-month is not always a good indication of the competitive landscape. I am sure Danny will be publishing a more comprehensive report, aggregating all this data, and fleshing out the true look at growth and decline amongst the various search engines.

Some 19% of internet users now say they use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves, or to see updates about others. This represents a significant increase over previous surveys in December 2008 and April 2009, when 11% of internet users said they use a status-update service.

Three groups of internet users are mainly responsible for driving the growth of this activity: social network website users, those who connect to the internet via mobile devices, and younger internet users – those under age 44.

Here’s Pew’s demographic breakdown:

According to the report, parsing by network:

The median age of a Twitter user is 31, which has remained stable over the past year. The median age for MySpace is now 26, down from 27 in May 2008, and the median age for LinkedIn is now 39, down from 40. Facebook, however, is graying a bit: the median age for this social network site is now 33, up from 26 in May 2008.

The Pew report paints a slightly different and younger picture of Twitter users than earlier studies:

Source: comScore, February, 2009 (via MarketingCharts)

Here’s the breakdown of social networking more generally compared with Twitter usage:

The report also found that mobile users and those who have more devices are more likely to use Twitter or a comparable service for status updates.

These data illustrate the growing importance of integrating social media into search marketing strategies.