Archive for the ‘Yahoo’ Category
Bing Growing, Yahoo Steady - Search Engine Market Share Update
It’s been almost seven months since I last provided insight into the search engine market shares based on click through activity. After holding relatively steady for months, this latest update shows Bing has grown by 2.0%. Perhaps most interestingly, it’s no longer growing at the expense of Yahoo, which was previously the case.
Here’s the raw numbers:
| Yahoo | Bing | Other | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| September 7 | 78.68% | 11.51% | 6.80% | 3.01% |
| September 14 | 78.35% | 11.13% | 6.50% | 4.02% |
| September 21 | 77.43% | 11.35% | 7.11% | 4.11% |
| September 28 | 77.65% | 10.80% | 7.27% | 4.28% |
| October 4 | 77.78% | 10.66% | 7.23% | 4.33% |
| October 12 | 77.78% | 10.66% | 7.21% | 4.35% |
| October 18 | 77.89% | 10.65% | 7.29% | 4.17% |
| October 25 | 77.83% | 10.56% | 7.56% | 4.05% |
| November 1 | 77.75% | 10.46% | 7.66% | 4.12% |
| November 8 | 77.96% | 10.21% | 7.75% | 4.08% |
| November 15 | 77.60% | 10.39% | 7.59% | 4.42% |
| November 22 | 77.59% | 10.41% | 7.67% | 4.37% |
| December 22 | 78.43% | 9.73% | 7.86% | 3.97% |
| Month of June 2010 | 75.93% | 9.94% | 9.82% | 3.83% |
Eightfold Logic collects data from a network of web sites distributed globally. The data used in this reports represents web sites distributed globally, accessed by searchers located in the U.S., and reflects click-through activity data.
Search Engine Market Share by Click Through Activity - December 2009
Surprisingly, I haven’t posted a search engine market share report in 30 days. We did post lots of other interesting data in the interim however. This week, we’re getting back to the evolving search engine landscape. Of course, not a lot overall has changed since our last look at the data.
Google continues to own almost 80% of the actual click through market share. We recognize that our numbers are different from some other reports. The core difference is our reports reflect click through activity, as opposed to general activity. As demonstrated in the post “how long is normal,” while most search lookup activity is on one word queries, click throughs occur most often on three-word searches. The same holds true for the various engines. A lot of people apparently run searches on Bing / Yahoo, but they refine their searches prior to clicking through. Hence, Google shows a much higher market share when we examine just click through activity.
As it relates to the change in activity over the last month, Bing continues to show strong forward momentum, and Yahoo continues to fade away. Sad, really. Google’s decline which started in June appears to have stabilized at a dominating ~78.4% market share. If we look at areas outside the US, Google’s share is even higher.
For convenience, this graph shows the change in Yahoo / Bing / and other non-google shares since May 2009. If you want to look at the raw data that for back you can view it on the prior blog post about search engine market shares. The data table is getting so long however that we’ll just show the last 4 months from here on out. I’m using an “all-time” chart to show the trends though.
The raw data for those who prefer the numbers:
| Yahoo | Bing | Other | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| September 7 | 78.68% | 11.51% | 6.80% | 3.01% |
| September 14 | 78.35% | 11.13% | 6.50% | 4.02% |
| September 21 | 77.43% | 11.35% | 7.11% | 4.11% |
| September 28 | 77.65% | 10.80% | 7.27% | 4.28% |
| October 4 | 77.78% | 10.66% | 7.23% | 4.33% |
| October 12 | 77.78% | 10.66% | 7.21% | 4.35% |
| October 18 | 77.89% | 10.65% | 7.29% | 4.17% |
| October 25 | 77.83% | 10.56% | 7.56% | 4.05% |
| November 1 | 77.75% | 10.46% | 7.66% | 4.12% |
| November 8 | 77.96% | 10.21% | 7.75% | 4.08% |
| November 15 | 77.60% | 10.39% | 7.59% | 4.42% |
| November 22 | 77.59% | 10.41% | 7.67% | 4.37% |
| December 22 | 78.43% | 9.73% | 7.86% | 3.97% |
Enquisite collects data from a network of thousands of web sites distributed globally. The data used in this reports represents web sites distributed globally, accessed by searchers located in the U.S., and reflects click-through activity data.
Search Engine Market Share Update
Greetings from Search Engine Strategies Berlin!
This week, our weekly trend data of search engine market share as defined by click-through activity shows a Bing regaining its forward momentum, after a slight slip last week. However, looking at the last four weeks, it seems that Bing is hovering quite steadily around the 7.7% market share mark. Over the next few weeks we should be able to see if this is maintained as a normal position, or if Bing recovers its forward momentum.
It should be interesting to observe what happens this week. Each year we see a big drop in search referral traffic associated with the week of the American Thanksgiving Holiday. Will all the engines drop the same proportionate amount, or will Google’s traditional strength in the IT and student marketplace result in a larger drop in market share for the week? Next week I’ll try and put together a chart showing how search volume drops in the run-up to the Holiday, and also how it bounces back.
As always, we’re providing the data in weekly breakdowns to try and identify trends in very granular ways. This data reflects actual clickthrough activity, and not the number of queries run. Meaning if someone performs a search on Yahoo, but doesn’t click through to the results, we don’t track it. We only track searches which generated referrals.
The raw data for those who prefer the numbers, not the graphics:
| Yahoo | Bing | Other | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| September 7 | 78.68% | 11.51% | 6.80% | 3.01% |
| September 14 | 78.35% | 11.13% | 6.50% | 4.02% |
| September 21 | 77.43% | 11.35% | 7.11% | 4.11% |
| September 28 | 77.65% | 10.80% | 7.27% | 4.28% |
| October 4 | 77.78% | 10.66% | 7.23% | 4.33% |
| October 12 | 77.78% | 10.66% | 7.21% | 4.35% |
| October 18 | 77.89% | 10.65% | 7.29% | 4.17% |
| October 25 | 77.83% | 10.56% | 7.56% | 4.05% |
| November 1 | 77.75% | 10.46% | 7.66% | 4.12% |
| November 8 | 77.96% | 10.21% | 7.75% | 4.08% |
| November 15 | 77.60% | 10.39% | 7.59% | 4.42% |
| November 22 | 77.59% | 10.41% | 7.67% | 4.37% |
Enquisite collects data from a network of web sites distributed globally. The data used in this reports represents web sites distributed globally, accessed by searchers located in the U.S., and reflects click-through activity data.
Weekly Search Engine Market Share Report Nov 15, 2009
For the first time in months, our weekly trend data of search engine market share as defined by click-through activity shows a small drop in the growth trend on the part of Bing. However, Microsoft (MSFT) has still gained almost a full point of market share over the last two months. Yahoo’s share of search referrals rose a little this week.
As always, we’re providing the data in weekly breakdowns to try and identify trends in very granular ways. This data reflects actual clickthrough activity, and not the number of queries run. Meaning if someone performs a search on Yahoo, but doesn’t click through to the results, we don’t track it. We only track searches which generated referrals.
The raw data for those who prefer the numbers, not the graphics:
| Yahoo | Bing | Other | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| September 7 | 78.68% | 11.51% | 6.80% | 3.01% |
| September 14 | 78.35% | 11.13% | 6.50% | 4.02% |
| September 21 | 77.43% | 11.35% | 7.11% | 4.11% |
| September 28 | 77.65% | 10.80% | 7.27% | 4.28% |
| October 4 | 77.78% | 10.66% | 7.23% | 4.33% |
| October 12 | 77.78% | 10.66% | 7.21% | 4.35% |
| October 18 | 77.89% | 10.65% | 7.29% | 4.17% |
| October 25 | 77.83% | 10.56% | 7.56% | 4.05% |
| November 1 | 77.75% | 10.46% | 7.66% | 4.12% |
| November 8 | 77.96% | 10.21% | 7.75% | 4.08% |
| November 15 | 77.60% | 10.39% | 7.59% | 4.42% |
Enquisite collects data from a network of web sites distributed globally. The data used in this reports represents web sites distributed globally, accessed by searchers located in the U.S., and reflects click-through activity data.
Search Engine Market Share Update, November 10, 2009
As noted previously, we’re trying and produce weekly and monthly breakdowns of certain search engine related market trend numbers. I posted a breakdown of search referral query length earlier, but I wanted to make sure I updated the search engine referral data as well. As always, we’re providing the data in weekly breakdowns to try and identify trends in very granular ways. This data reflects actual clickthrough activity, and not the number of queries run. Meaning if someone performs a search on Yahoo, but doesn’t click through to the results, we don’t track it. We only track searches which generated referrals.
The data shows a continued growth trend on the part of Bing, with Microsoft (MSFT) gaining almost a full point of market share over the last two months. Yahoo’s share of search referrals continues to erode.
For those who like the raw data / numbers, here you go:
| Yahoo | Bing | Other | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| September 7 | 78.68% | 11.51% | 6.80% | 3.01% |
| September 14 | 78.35% | 11.13% | 6.50% | 4.02% |
| September 21 | 77.43% | 11.35% | 7.11% | 4.11% |
| September 28 | 77.65% | 10.80% | 7.27% | 4.28% |
| October 4 | 77.78% | 10.66% | 7.23% | 4.33% |
| October 12 | 77.78% | 10.66% | 7.21% | 4.35% |
| October 18 | 77.89% | 10.65% | 7.29% | 4.17% |
| October 25 | 77.83% | 10.56% | 7.56% | 4.05% |
| November 1 | 77.75% | 10.46% | 7.66% | 4.12% |
| November 8 | 77.96% | 10.21% | 7.75% | 4.08% |
Enquisite collects data from a network of web sites distributed globally. The data used in this reports represents web sites distributed globally, accessed by searchers located in the U.S., and reflects click-through activity data.
Weekly Search Engine Market Share Update
Last week I published information about how the market shares for the search engines have evolved over the last few months. I’m going to attempt to post updates almost every week, offset randomly by other interesting trends such as browser share numbers. This week, I’ve put together a weekly update, as quite a few people emailed me about the evolving trends.
To highlight the trend, I’ll re-post the data from early September.
search engine market shares for search engine usage based on searchers located in the US
| Yahoo | Bing | Others | September 7 | 78.68% | 11.51% | 6.80% | 4.06% |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| September 14 | 78.35% | 11.13% | 6.50% | 4.02% |
| September 21 | 77.43% | 11.35% | 7.11% | 4.12% |
| September 28 | 77.65% | 10.80% | 7.27% | 4.28% |
| October 4 | 77.78% | 10.66% | 7.23% | 4.25% |
| October 12 | 77.78% | 10.66% | 7.21% | 4.36% |
| October 18 | 77.89% | 10.65% | 7.29% | 4.16% |
Again, this data represents search engine click through activity where the people initiating the searches are located in the U.S. At some point I’ll present information on global search activity.
Search Engine Market Share Update October 2009
As mentioned in my previous post about browser usage, I’m going to start posting more data, more often. This week I’m putting out search engine market share numbers. I haven’t posted a U.S. search engine market share update since March 2008, so I’m definitely overdue!
Rather than providing a simple set of monthly numbers, I’ve decided to provide weekly breakdowns using aggregate data from our suite of search marketing tools, which makes it possible you review a few months worth of data at a detailed level. I’ll try to update these every two weeks, with weekly breakdowns for now, to try and identify trends in very granular ways. Interesting high-level, and consistent growth for Bing, overall growth for Yahoo! as demonstrated in this chart. Remember, this is based on clickthrough activity.
Astute observers may note that these numbers differ from other reports. Our data is collected at the web site level, based on actual referrals received. While people may search any of these engines more often, but not click through to the results. We report on the activity we see hitting the network of sites we’re tracking, and we are very careful to report only on the search referral traffic, so this won’t include referral traffic from Yahoo mail or gmail, for example. We’ve also rolled up all the various types of Google search activity into “Google” and not separated out Google Image Search / Blog Search, etc.
U.S. weekly search engine market share breakdowns
As you can see, Yahoo! and Bing have been climbing, slowly but steadily, as a percentage of overall search engine referral activity. For more details, please view the weekly breakdown chart below.
| Yahoo | Bing | Others | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| April 5 | 82.74% | 9.49% | 4.99% | 2.77% |
| April 13 | 82.65 | 9.60% | 4.99% | 2.76% |
| April 20 | 82.03% | 9.85% | 5.30% | 2.82% |
| April 27 | 82.20% | 9.62% | 5.41% | 2.76% |
| May 4 | 81.26% | 9.55% | 5.22% | 3.97% |
| May 11 | 80.98% | 9.69% | 5.17% | 4.16% |
| May 18 | 79.94% | 10.45% | 5.32% | 4.29% |
| May 25 | 80.06% | 10.39% | 5.37% | 4.19% |
| June 1 | 79.80% | 10.44% | 5.39% | 4.37% |
| June 8 | 79.48% | 10.69% | 5.53% | 4.30% |
| June 15 | 79.41% | 10.54% | 5.79% | 4.26% |
| June 22 | 79.40% | 10.56% | 5.79% | 4.26% |
| June 29 | 79.52% | 10.37% | 5.62% | 4.48% |
| July 6 | 79.51% | 10.46% | 5.48% | 4.55% |
| July 13 | 79.69% | 10.31% | 5.56% | 4.44% |
| July 20 | 79.61% | 10.30% | 5.62% | 4.48% |
| July 27 | 78.21% | 11.18% | 6.18% | 4.43% |
| August 3 | 78.77% | 10.95% | 6.06% | 4.22% |
| August 10 | 77.92% | 11.54% | 6.36% | 4.18% |
| August 17 | 77.33% | 11.82% | 6.80% | 4.06% |
| August 24 | 78.11% | 11.51% | 6.27% | 4.11% |
| August 31 | 78.62% | 11.27% | 6.27% | 4.11% |
| September 7 | 78.68% | 11.51% | 6.80% | 4.06% |
| September 14 | 78.35% | 11.13% | 6.50% | 4.02% |
| September 21 | 77.43% | 11.35% | 7.11% | 4.12% |
| September 28 | 77.65% | 10.80% | 7.27% | 4.28% |
| October 4 | 77.78% | 10.66% | 7.23% | 4.25% |
| October 12 | 77.78% | 10.66% | 7.21% | 4.36% |
In context of all three engines, here’s a chart of the global search engine referral rate market share numbers which does show interesting trends over the last few months.
Search Engine referral rate activity report
Enquisite collects data from a network of web sites distributed globally. The data used in this reports represents web sites distributed globally, accessed by searchers located in the U.S.
Let me know if you would like a similar report for the UK, Canada or other areas, please.
Building a New Business Begins
continued from part 3 Starting to Build the Campaign Platform
So, In June 2005, I set about separating Enquisite as an entity from Metamend. This was a crucial and critical step for me, and the company. I needed to establish a firewall between the companies for many reasons, not the least of which was to ensure that competing agencies would never have to fear that their data was accessible to potential competitors. My co-founder at Metamend, Todd Hooge, along with Glenn Convey, a very talented individual in his own right, took over operating that business. It took a few months, but I removed myself from all operational involvement, which was personally challenging. But by December 2005, it was done, and I was out.
By this time, I also had a complete outline for what would become the core elements of Enquisite Campaign, and the next generation of products still to come after it. Over the next few months, I proceeded to break down the functions into manageable pieces we could build as foundational elements for the platform. I received a lot of valuable guidance for each foundational block along the way, and added some key people to the company whom I still depend upon today. Key internal technical counsels for me were our Lead Developer, Rick Morris, and our VP for Technical Operations, Greg Caws. They foresaw many technical hurdles we would face long before we ran into them. Their advice made a dramatic difference every step of the way.
Building the foundation of Campaign was not trivial. Fundamentally, we needed five pillars to support the architecture for the system. We built the various pillars and released them as individual products. So while we’ve received great reviews and feedback for Pro (Now Enquisite™ Optimizer), PPC Assurance (now Enquisite™ Auditor) and our Links Report (within Optimizer), we’ve really looked at these as stepping stones. The last two pillars - the internally-facing “Collector” and a massively scalable, super-fast database - rounded out the foundation.
To build the opportunity analysis and the reporting functions for Campaign, we needed to deal with paid search traffic in a way no one before had. We needed to understand, and value, paid campaigns in relation to organic ones. This perspective, and the requirement to segment out paid search traffic in a new way, led to our PPC Assurance product. This application reveals click accuracy for PPC with amazing precision, enabling advertisers to credibly claim credits from Google, Yahoo! and others and potentially save thousands, even millions of dollars. Equally important, this first step allowed us to understand paid search in a different way from existing solutions.
As a bonus, the work on Enquisite Auditor led to our second product, Enquisite Pro. Earlier this year it was officially recognized by Yahoo!, when they began recommending it via their Traffic Quality Center. We built the early version of Pro - now renamed Optimizer for a purpose - to provide search engine positioning reports, and to segment traffic and campaigns in ways that had not done before. We also pushed the development team to devise a new way to collect data which resulted in the simply named “Enquisite™ Collector.” In case you haven’t noticed, we have very simple and functional product names. In this case, the Collector is an fantastically scalable next-generation data logging system that uses over 26,000 web servers distributed worldwide to collect log file data for our reports.
Continued in part 5….
Starting to Build the Campaign Platform
continued from part 2 The Genesis of the Enquisite Campaign Idea
To make Campaign work technically, I knew we needed at least two things off the bat: (1) we needed to capture some critical information which wasn’t presently available; and (2) due to the absolute scale and magnitude of data, we needed to capture it much more efficiently than present web-based logging systems did. The first conundrum was capturing that critical information, and it was during an animated discussion with my business partner at Metamend, Todd Hooge, that we hit on a means to gather it. This led to Enquisite Optimizer’s (formerly Enquisite Pro) search engine positioning reports.
At first, I didn’t know if the rank reporting process would work the way I needed it to. So we started testing, and I kept dreaming up ideas around a better business model. I didn’t share these ideas with Todd, as we were far away from capturing the data necessary to power a new reporting system. I also suspected that if I had shared these thoughts, he probably would have looked at me like I was nuts (again), and made some comment like “it would also be nice if cars could fly.” Plus, I was still thinking about all the things we would need to build for the “finished” system, including the nuts-and-bolts implementation. Anyhow, Todd helped me tremendously to break down that first, crucial, barrier around capturing the necessary data. It may seem trivial today, but it was a big deal then. Even today it’s still a big deal to people when they get an explanation of the entire data capture system.
Once we worked out the germ of the idea on how to capture the data, we were off. I hired a developer to turn the theory into practice. Simultaneously, I started writing up some of the ideas for patent submissions. By June of 2005, we were ready to try out a basic data capture and reporting system, and I had written a phonebook’s worth of documents to file for patent protection.
When I showed the initial reports to some of my search colleagues, they all said, “When can we have it?” It was at this point that I seriously started considering building out the entire suite for a larger purpose. While at first it was an interesting and meaningful project to help me build out my search marketing firm, based on the initial reaction to the first reports (which now sit within Enquisite Optimizer), I realized we could build a system for everyone, not just ourselves.
Continued in Part 4:
Search Engine Market Shares 2007
So I arrived at Search Engine Strategies New York today, and I was asked by a couple of people about search engine market shares. After pulling out the Ask numbers last week, I had all the data ready to go for the other engines. Remember, this data reflects the search referral data we’re seeing across the entire network of sites that Enquisite is tracking, so thousands of sites’ data contributed to these numbers. When I actually graphed the data, it looked quite interesting.
I had to break the data into two parts. In this first graph we see Yahoo have its customary summer spike, which generally seems to relate to the end of school. During the summer months students spend less time online, but when they go online it’s to fetch mail and the like. During this period, Yahoo! generally goes up in market share, as most students appear to use Yahoo Mail. Normally, we also see Google drop during this period.
What’s interesting is that MSN is slowly but surely gaining traction, and moving up. It’s gone from 2.9% in January 2007 to just over 5% at the end of January 2008. Still small, but almost 100% growth, and anyone in business know’s 100% growth does matter.
Meanwhile however, Yahoo’s actually losing market share, and at a greater rate than MSN’s growing.
Now take a look at what happens when we add Google to the mix.
Google’s actually over 80% of all search referral traffic we’re seeing across our network of sites. In fact, the data I’m looking at for March has Google reaching 83% of all search referrals we’re seeing. This data is culled from well over 250 million referrals in the last year.
So, is search getting more competitive? Not really. Is Microsoft buying Yahoo going to make much of a dent in Google’s lead? Nope. But (as Rand pointed out) if you look at their combined reach in the display ad business that’s a different matter.