Archive for December, 2006
Search Engine Market Shares - Click Through Ratios
Earlier this week, we published data on Search Engine Market Shares. I’m going to through one more piece of information out there - although, being the Friday before Christmas, very few people will probably read it.
I’ve seen lots of stats about which page number in the search engines people actually go to to find what they are looking for. I’m always surprised when I see numbers like 10% of searchers go to page 5, and the like. Here’s the numbers based on ~35M queries (more than just November and December). So the columns are
- Page Number that a search referral came from;
- The percentage of all referrals that came from that page;
Oh - and no, there isn’t a mistake here - page 13 & 15 are leading page 12 on click through ratios - once you’re past a certain point, most click throughs are coming from image searches, and people drill in really deep there.
Certain industries, like technology tend to have higher click through rates from page 1, with many averaging in the 92%-94% range.
|
Page Number
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 13 15 12 19 17 14 16 21 18 |
Overall Rate
84.2080% 7.3512 3.0879 1.4376 0.9703 0.5462 0.4619 0.2756 0.2734 0.2184 0.1966 0.1137 0.0961 0.0895 0.0628 0.0621 0.0593 0.0412 0.0373 0.0305 |
Job Opening - UI Developer
As mentioned last week, we’re starting to hire. I could post the whole job here - but we’ve posted it at VIATeC, and I wanted to direct your attention there. Not because we don’t have time to post it here, but if you’re looking for work on Vancouver Island, you really should check out the VIATeC job board. We’re big supporters of the local tech community, and want to see it continue to grow through more and more talented people joining the community, either by moving here, or just participating.
Anyhow, we’re hiring! We’ll be hiring lots more staff over the next few months. I’ll post updates here, but please check out the Job Description we’ve posted at the VIATeC site.
I look forward to hearing from you!
Search Engine Market Share addendum
If you haven’t seen the search engine market share numbers in the previous post, please read them. I read an article this morning from the International Herald Tribune, which discussed the growth of search advertising in Europe, and most interestingly;
(…) the governments of Germany and France are seeking permission from the European Union to pump as much as €250 million into a search engine research project involving a consortium of European companies using the umbrella name Quaero. Exalead is a member.
I’ll run a report sometime in January or February, just on search traffic from users in Europe, and a few other continents. It’ll be interesting to see how the market shares vary from continent to continent.
Search Engine Market Shares
I haven’t posted a search engine market share report in a while. The last time I wrote them up was in September. Obviously, things have changed a bit since then. Below, I’m posting the numbers for November, and for the first six days of December. Enjoy! In January, I’ll publish the rest of December. I might also publish a weekly breakdown for the month; I wonder which engine’s traffic drops off the most as the Holiday approaches, as a percentage of overall traffic?
Please note - we’re only reporting the search engine referral market shares.
|
November
Yahoo MSN Google Images AOL Google News ASK Comcast My Web Search MSN Live Froogle Netscape Dogpile Bell South MyWay Earthlink Yahoo Images Altavista Google Translate Google Blogsearch |
%
78.2139% 5.9433% 3.9670% 2.8089% 1.8245% 1.0584% 0.7158% 0.5042% 0.3825% 0.3333% 0.3012% 0.2824% 0.2711% 0.2524% 0.2301% 0.2155% 0.1727% 0.1690% 0.0961% 0.0904% |
December 1-6
Yahoo MSN Google Images AOL Ask Google News ComCast MSN Live My Web Search Dogpile Netscape Bellsouth Myway Earthlink Altavista Yahoo Images Froogle Information Google Translate |
%
78.4278% 6.8320% 3.6513% 2.7128% 1.8007% 0.7319% 0.5046% 0.4975% 0.4131% 0.3957% 0.2967% 0.2850% 0.2494% 0.2300% 0.2022% 0.1930% 0.1534% 0.1387% 0.1057% 0.0962% |
Data represents just under 10M search referrals in the period.
Interesting movement in the engines since September Here’s some very quick observations:
- ASK.com continues to grow. It was at 0.59% in September. (It’s also highly relevant traffic, looking at the data - perhaps the most relevant?)
- I’m continually shocked at Yahoo’s numbers. They were at 10.2% in September. Where did those searchers go? It will be interesting to see if the rebound in early December continues.
- MSN is down from 6.09% to 4.0644% (that’s a drop of 33% since September) in our sample.
- Google’s up, from 78.06% in September; but that’s minor growth. Not enough to account for the drops in MSN or Yahoo!
- We’ve broken out Google News since September - It was always counted, just not broken out. Interesting to note that the events in November drove a lot of people there, but that volume has dropped considerably since Thanksgiving in the U.S. That does of course reflect a lot of additional traffic to Google since September
- I have no idea why AOL jumped as much as it did - perhaps they came from Yahoo! or MSN?
- People STILL use Altavista.
Job Openings - We're Hiring
We’re growing, and thus hiring!
In January, we want to hire a number of great individuals. Developers, Programmers, and a great UI Developer with vision will be key. I’ll post up more information later, but if you, or anyone you know wants to work at a great, fast up and coming company, this is the place.
As you know, Enquisite is all about the end user. So far, we’ve built it out based on user requests for features. We’ve ensured that all the crucial information you want, and have asked for, is here. Now, we’re going to add someone to build the interfaces to make it all look incredibly cool, and even easier to use! “Focus on the user, and all else will follow”. That is one of the key philosophies behind everything that Enquisite does.
So, first off, we are looking for a User Interface Designer to help drive the design process for new Enquisite products and features. As a User Interface Designer, you will work closely with Web Usability Engineers and Product Managers throughout all stages of the product cycle.
The successful candidate will have a successful track record in the implementation of user interface models and a solid understanding of design for Software Engineering, including accommodation of Quality Assurance needs. Please send us online references to your work if possible. We’ll post out a full job description shortly, but if you’re interested, please email your resume to “careers [at] enquisite.com”
We look forward to hearing from you!
Food Bank Challenge Update
I promised readers that I would let everyone know the outcome of the VIATeC Food Bank Challenge (2006).
I originally posted about it on the Metamend Blog, back in early November. It’s wrapped up for the year now, having ended on December 1. I’m very proud of all the staff at Metamend and Enquisite for their participation, and proud of the community as a whole. In the end the community raised ~$205,000.00 in food and cash donations! What’s truly stunning about that figure is the growth over the previous year’s totals:
“The total value of this year’s food and cash donations is $205,000, enough to feed 5000 people for over a month,” said Food Bank Director Brent Palmer. “We will not only be able to save on storage costs, but will also be able to buy fresher food on a weekly basis with all of the cash that has been donated. We are deeply grateful to all of those in the Technology community for the tremendous impact they have made.”
Sixty local advanced technology companies participated in the 2006 VIATeC Food Bank Challenge, an increase of 20 from 2005. Companies competed to see who could donate the most overall or per employee, and received points for food and cash donations.
“By donating $90,500 in cash to the Mustard Seed Food Bank, local technology companies have donated more cash this year than our total cash donations from all the other years combined. After just four years, the participating companies in the VIATeC Food Bank Challenge have donated a total of over $466,000 in cash and food,” added Gunn.
Hopefully, next year, even more companies will participate.
Enquisite Reporting Upgrade
We made a minor update over the weekend. Nothing anyone will see in the reports, but something which affects the speed at which they load. Clients with smaller databases might not notice the blink of an eye difference, but larger users will. It’s a dramatic speed increase.
We continue to work on the updates for password maintenance, multi-user accounts, and the like. I’ll keep you apprised.