Search Engine Land » Stats: Popularity

Bing Now A Full Point Ahead Of Yahoo In Search Share — comScore

Greg Sterling — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 22:31:52 +0000

Today comScore reported January search share figures for the US market. We restrained ourselves this month, not posting on this subject before the official release, given the error that happened last time through one of the financial analyst firms and their early release of the data.

Google gained share vs. last month. However, the big news is that Bing is now firmly ahead of Yahoo in “explicit core search.” But using comScore’s expanded “total core search” definition Yahoo remains ahead of Bing.

Below are the official numbers; first explicit core search (no slideshows) and then total core search (including so-called “contextual search”):

Yahoo and Bing have now effectively changed places. Bing has taken share from Yahoo, while Google has been largely unaffected. Accordingly, the “search alliance” share of queries remains essentially flat at 29 percent.

Chrome’s Market Share Drops In January; Was It Due To Google’s Penalty?

Matt McGee — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 20:05:21 +0000

After 17 straight months of gains in market share, Google’s Chrome web browser dropped 0.17 percent in January, and the company that tracks browser market share suggests that it’s because Google penalized Chrome after a botched sponsored blog post campaign.

The figures come from Net Applications, which says it tracks about 160 million unique visits per month to a worldwide network of more than 40,000 sites.

According to Net Applications, Firefox and Safari also saw market share losses in January. While they were declining, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer gained 1.09%, its biggest monthly gain in at least two years.

One possible explanation is that a lot of people bought new PC computers over the holidays, and Internet Explorer’s market share grew in January because it’s the default browser there. But that didn’t happen a year ago; in January 2011, Explorer’s market share declined nearly a full percent. (IE did gain in February, 2011, as shown above.)

Net Applications ties Explorer’s gain and Chrome’s decline to the Google penalty which removed Chrome from search results for a number of browser-related search terms. Google penalized Chrome in early January after the company’s own botched sponsored blog post campaign ran afoul of Google’s search/webmaster guidelines.

In my searches this morning, the main Chrome page doesn’t appear on page one for “browser,” “web browser,” “download web browser,” “chrome,” “google chrome” nor “chrome browser.” I’m not sure that’s why Chrome’s market share dropped in January, but it’s an interesting theory to consider at minimum.

(tip via Computerworld)

Bing Out Of “Betaphase” In Germany, Claims 10 Million Users

Greg Sterling — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 22:27:38 +0000

Bing is reportedly now out of betaphase in Deutschland. According to Microsoft, Bing has 10 million users or 20 percent of active internet users in Germany:

Mittlerweile benutzen fast 10 Millionen Nutzer in Deutschland regelmäßig Bing, das sind 20 Prozent der aktiven Internetnutzer hierzulande.

According to several third-party sources, Bing’s market share is smaller than the 20 percent figure cited above. For example, the following is StatCounter’s search engine data for Germany:

Source: StatCounter

NetMarketshare generally agrees, showing Bing’s PC search share at just over 2 percent.

The combined Bing-Yahoo “search alliance” share in the US is about 30 percent. However the search alliance has considerably less reach in Europe. While the organic-results merger was completed last year, Microsoft adCenter is just now rolling out in Europe.

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DuckDuckGo Sets New Traffic Record, But Stats Show How Dominant Google, Others Are

Matt McGee — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 21:50:55 +0000

DuckDuckGo, the upstart search engine that’s challenged its bigger competitors on privacy issues, has had a couple straight days of record-setting traffic. But the numbers show just how much the major search engines dominate the search space.

First, let’s recognize how cool it is that DuckDuckGo actually has a public web page that shows the search engine’s traffic and query activity. We learned about it via a DuckDuckGo tweet today; you can see for yourself at duckduckgo.com/traffic.html.

The chart is impressive and shows the monthly moving averages of direct queries on DuckDuckGo’s website. Down below the chart are the numbers that show the search engine had 731,472 direct queries on January 24th — a new record, breaking the record that had been set a day earlier. Those were the first two times that DuckDuckGo had reached 700,000+ queries in a day.

The growth is impressive and good for the search industry, but the latest search engine stats from comScore provide a reality check.

ComScore says there were 18.2 billion explicit core searches in the U.S. in December. ~~Some quick math indicates, then, that DuckDuckGo’s query volume is about 0.00004 of overall search activity — or about one in every 25,000 searches.~~ Scratch that for inaccuracy (due to comparing a daily DuckDuckGo number to a monthly comScore figure). If the comScore number is converted to daily queries, as it should be, then DuckDuckGo’s query volume is actually about 0.1 percent of overall search activity, or about one of every 1,000 queries — much more than I originally suggested. (This is why I avoided math at all costs in college.)

So again, props to DuckDuckGo on the new records and for even showing query data to the public at all. (Wouldn’t it be great if Google and Bing did the same?) But wow … still such a long, long way to go.

Reports: Mobile Search Impressions Explode, CTRs Beat PC

Greg Sterling — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 19:50:16 +0000

A couple of Q4 2011 reports released this week from Marin Software and IgnitionOne show, among other things, the dramatic growth of mobile paid search advertising. According to the IgnitionOne document, the “mobile [paid] search ad spend is up 269% YoY and impressions are up 317%.”

IgnitionOne said that among its retail clients, “Mobile search [ ] accounted for 24% of retailers’ total paid search budgets on Black Friday, compared to 14.2% of the total during all of Q4. This represents enormous growth compared to Q4 2010, when mobile search spend accounted for only 5.2% of total retail paid search spend.”

The following chart from IgnitionOne shows the growth of mobile impressions, clicks and search ad spend vs. 2010.

The Marin Software report says the company is seeing increased adoption of mobile and tablet advertising among its clients. More significantly, however, its clients’ campaigns on mobile are “showing significantly better performance than similar campaigns on desktop computers.”

Marin published comparisons for its aggregated search campaigns across PC and mobile. As the chart below indicates, paid search ads on smartphones and tablets outperformed those on the PC in terms of CTRs.

December “Explicit” Search Numbers: Bing Now Ahead Of Yahoo

Greg Sterling — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 01:12:53 +0000

Last night I posted comScore December search market share numbers, based on a financial analyst report (one of several that came out yesterday or early this morning). The report incorrectly presented the search share numbers as follows.

Those figures made it appear that Google had gained share at Bing’s expense. It was Yahoo that lost share, however. Below are the official comScore “explicit core search” numbers, released earlier today:

I was told by earlier today that the error was comScore’s. However comScore says that the error came from the third party that published the numbers yesterday. The more expansive “total core search” data (with slideshows) still shows Yahoo ahead of Bing.

The numbers above don’t include mobile search query volumes, which are now as much as 20 percent (or more) in some categories and growing rapidly. Below are StatCounter data reflecting mobile (browser) search market share in the US.

Source: StatCounter

Google is much more dominant in mobile than on the PC (in terms of browser-based queries). However there’s considerable “search” volume that goes through smartphone apps that isn’t being captured in the aggregate by comScore or anyone else for that matter.

Recently comScore reported that for the first time more people are using apps than the mobile browser.

Hitwise: “Facebook” Was 4 Of Top 10 Search Queries In 2011

Greg Sterling — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 15:08:20 +0000

Following the major engines themselves, Experian Hitwise announced the top search terms of 2011. The company looked at the top 1,000 search queries of 2011 and found that Facebook topped the list for the third year in a row.

Overall Facebook had four of the top 10 search terms for 2011, the same as in 2010. However query volume for the collection of Facebook terms grew 33 percent vs. last year.

Top search queries of 2010 and 2011

What’s noteworthy is that all of the top 10 are navigational queries. Beyond the top 10, Hitwise said that “social networking-related terms dominated the results, accounting for 4.18 percent of the top 50 searches. This is an increase of 12 percent compared with 2010.”

According to Hitwise, the top 10 websites visited in the US were the following:

Facebook
Google
Youtube
Mail.yahoo.com
Yahoo
Bing
Search.yahoo.com
Gmail
Mail.live.com
MSN.com

The biggest “mover” among the top 10 queries and websites was Myspace, which exited in accordance with its precipitous decline in traffic. There’s more analysis of the year’s top search queries by category in the Hitwise blog post.

Curiously, Facebook doesn’t appear on any of the “top lists” issued by Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask or AOL (see below). With Google’s list, at least, it’s based on “rising” queries rather than those most popular overall.

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Bing, Yahoo Now Neck & Neck In US Search Market Share

Matt McGee — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 00:33:53 +0000

Bing’s slow growth in US search market share continues, and Microsoft’s two-and-a-half-year-old search engine is now practically neck-and-neck with Yahoo. Both, however, remain far behind Google.

The latest comScore numbers show Bing increasing its market share in November to an even 15 percent, while Yahoo’s dropped to 15.1 percent. Google holds 65.4 percent of the market, a small drop from October.

This is comScore’s “explicit” search measurement, which doesn’t include things like slideshows and certain Google Instant Search queries. It also doesn’t reflect mobile search queries.

For comparison to last year, comScore measured Google’s market share at 66.2 percent in November 2010, while Yahoo was at 16.4 percent and Bing at 11.8 percent.

ComScore hasn’t yet posted these numbers online, but we’ll update this post with a link when they do.

Postscript: Here are the official comScore numbers.

Google Zeitgeist 2011: Rebecca Black, Lego Alien & Steve Jobs

Barry Schwartz — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 14:35:18 +0000

Google released the Google Zeitgeist 2011 today. Google made several lists this year and even broke them down by country. You can play with the interactive lists at googlezeitgeist.com.

Those in the picture above are included in the “fastest rising searches” category, including Rebecca Black, Google+, Ryan Dunn, Casey Anthony, Battlefield 3, iPhone 5, Adele, 東京電力, Steve Jobs and iPad 2.

Google summed up the year also in this video:

Here is a partial text based list:

Fastest-Rising Toys 1. Lego Alien Conquest 2. Unova Pokedex 3. Fluttershy

Fastest-Rising Costumes 1. Angry Birds 2. LMFAO 3. Flynn Rider

Fastest-Rising Recalls 1. Turkey 2. Bob stroller 3. Stihl

Most Popular Apparel Brands 1. Nike 2. Victoria Secret 3. Zappos

Most Popular Jewelry 1. engagement rings 2. Tiffanys 3. Pandora jewelry

Most Popular Gift Stores 1. Edible Arrangements 2. Oriental Trading 3. Spencers

Most Popular Home & Garden 1. Home Depot 2. Lowes 3. Ikea

Fastest-Rising Gadgets 1. Kindle Fire 2. iPhone 4S 3. Sidekick 4G

Most Popular Cell Phones 1. iPhone 2. HTC Evo 3. HTC Thunderbolt

Most Popular Video Games 1. Black Ops 2. Call of Duty 3. Halo Reach

Fastest-Rising Home Appliances 1. Dyson Slim 2. Foodsaver Vacuum Sealer 3. Kirby Vacuum

Most Popular Coupons 1. Target 2. Lowes 3. Hobby Lobby

For the past year’s Google Zeitgeist, see this page.

Survey Says SEO The Single Most Important Marketing Channel For SMBs

Greg Sterling — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 14:35:53 +0000

SEO: one channel to rule them all? A new “merchant confidence survey” from lead-gen company MerchantCircle/Reply.com, among 2,500 US small businesses, finds that search engine optimization is the marketing channel they would choose if they could choose only one.

The question asked was: “If you had to put all your marketing time and budget into only one channel, what would it be?” The list of choices included SEO, paid search, mobile, social and traditional media. As you can see below SEO beats everything else by a mile.

What’s also interesting is how high “traditional media” ranked. That category would include newspapers, yellow pages, direct mail, traditional radio and so on. Newspapers and direct mail were the top traditional channels being used by this group of survey respondents.

However Facebook (not Facebook Ads) was the most common marketing tool, used by 70 percent of these SMB respondents. The question was, “Are you promoting your business with the following websites/services?”

The online survey was conducted in November. The sample came from MerchantCircle’s 1.6 million SMB member database. Just under 80 percent of respondents were businesses with fewer than four employees. The majority (63 percent) had annual marketing budgets of $2,500 or less.

There are additional findings about the use of social media, deals and mobile marketing that I discuss on my personal blog Screenwerk.