Posts Tagged ‘referral traffic’
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.
Enquisite Reporting Suite Update
(Nov 2009) We are pleased to announce the November update to the Enquisite Performance Suite. This release includes three new enhancements:
- Bounce Rate, Time on Site, and Page View metrics within Enquisite Optimizer
- Transferring Segment Data from Optimizer to Enquisite Campaign
- A 50% speed increase in the core Longtail reporting interface.
Our Enquisite Optimizer product has been enhanced to allow you to see the bounce rate, time on site, and page view metrics for your site as well as any segment of search referral traffic that you create within Optimizer. This has been an outstanding request from publishers and etailers alike.
This screenshot reflects ~10 days worth of data from a web site with ~150k search referrals per day. The segment displayed is showing Google organic search traffic only, where the visitors were searching from within the U.S., and which zip codes they were located in when they visited the business. The map shows the State by State breakdowns (WA is proportionally too high), and the Time on Site / Bounce Rate / PageViews calculation shows us the site average, and the average for just this segment. The system took 5 seconds to calculate the entire dataset, most of which was the time it took me to set the parameters!
This feature was created to provide you with the ability to determine the relevancy and perceived value of the pages on your site. It can help you determine the factors that may compel users who arrive at your site to immediately leave as well as the pages that may entice them to continue to browse. Not only will this help you better structure your site and pages, but it will allow you to understand which pages to focus on in order to best shape the incoming traffic.
Finally, the addition of time on site, page view and bounce rate calculated against both paid or organic search referral segments makes it possible for any search marketer to isolate and identify high value opportunities and optimize campaigns accordingly.
Our Longtail reports is the core of Enquisite Optimizer. We’ve made some code improvements which halve load times, and with a new Database optimization we’re implementing, we expect to reduce load times even more significantly. For all but the largest sites, Optimizer was already blazingly fast for a real-time analysis and insight engine. Now, it’s even faster for everyone!
Finally, we’ve started the process of integrating the segmentation functionality in Optimizer into our Campaign product. This will make it even easier than before to build and manage your search marketing campaigns.
We’ve got a lot more improvements coming in the next few months, and thank-you all for your continued support, suggestions and feedback.
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.
Google Chrome, Safari and Firefox Continue to Grow; Don't Ignore Mobile
Around this time last year, I looked at browser market share in the context of Google’s Chrome browser release. The market has definitely changed quite a bit since last year. Most surprisingly for me is how Chrome rebounded from a soft launch. Firefox, Chrome and Safari now account for nearly 31% of search queries worldwide, up 50% over September, 2008. Interestingly, Firefox and Safari have both grown by almost 45% in their combined market share vs. November, 2008.
At first glance this particular data set doesn’t appear to help much with SEO. But usability is a major concern of any SEO, and browser compatibility is key to usability. So SEOs need to understand these trends and plan accordingly to render properly within the leading browsers.
Separately, my friend Cindy Krum is always asking me about mobile browser data. Total mobile browser market share now surpasses 1% of all search engine referral browser views. Not surprisingly, the iPhone leads the pack at is at almost 0.6% marketshare, which is significant, and double the share vs. April of this year. RIM, Opera and Android and a few others make up the remainder. One year ago, Android was a non-issue. Now, it’s 0.04%. Still tiny, but noticeable. SEOs need to pay attention to this emerging trend. The real estate in the organic listings on the mobile browsers is much smaller, and the likelihood of people on mobile browsers going to page 2 in the results is also lower, so being at the top of the page one listings in mobile really is all that matters.
| July 2009 | August 2009 | September 2009 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| MSIE (all) | 67.59% | 66.75% | 66.61% |
| Firefox | 19.09% | 21.99% | 21.13% |
| Safari | 5.12% | 6.86% | 7.08% |
| Chrome | 1.83% | 2.27% | 2.38% |
| iPhone | 0.45% | 0.59% | 0.58% |
| Android | 0.04% | 0.04% | 0.04% |
About the data. Enquisite works with thousands of sites worldwide and captures a trove of relevant search-related data every day. The browser shares reported here are based on data from a selection of Enquisite-tagged sites that cumulatively represent over 350 million page views/month, across most major industry sectors - a very significant sample size.
Lastly, yesterday marked the kick-off for SMX East. Sadly, I’m not going to be there this year, as I had to bow out at the last minute for personal reasons. I know a few people, Jessica Bowman among them, had commented that were looking forward to some data, so in that vein, I hope this provides some insight into what’s going on in the search world. More data on blog posts to come.
postscript - for those who don’t like having 2 windows open… here’s the numbers from last year…
| Date | Chrome | Firefox | Safari | MS IE (All) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 09/30/08 | 0.501% | 15.007% | 4.321% | 79.832% |
| 10/15/08 | 0.433% | 15.387% | 4.178% | 79.592% |
| 10/20/08 | 0.462% | 15.643% | 4.296% | 79.183% |
New Enquisite Feature - Map Overlays
Sure, map overlays are nothing new to analytics. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been an analytics package that lets you geographically segment just your search traffic, and view it on a map — until now. I’m delighted to announce that we’ve just added Map Overlays functionality to Enquisite Pro. Let me spend a moment telling you more about why we felt this was so important.
We found that reading the list of cities that are sending you what traffic is interesting and valuable, but let’s face it-seeing that search traffic spread out on a map is much, much cooler. Heck, even I was surprised when I saw Enquisite’s own search referral data laid out on a map!
Using Map Overlays you can visualize traffic globally, by country, state (province / region), or city. We didn’t drill down to zip code, but might in future, if enough people request it. Nonetheless, in the matter of 5 seconds I was able to visualize traffic on a state-by-state basis. I discovered that Missouri sends far more traffic than I would’ve expected and Texas sends fewer referrals than I would have thought. That tells me one thing—we’ve got lots of opportunity for growth within Texas.
But Map Overlays doesn’t just work to show you search referrals by geographic area-We also created it to be able to plot actions and conversions. One thing that’s pretty interesting to do is to plot the search referral traffic to the site on a state-by-state basis, then filter it just to look at particular inquiries, and compare referrals to conversions. Sure helps it easy to make smarter business decisions.
For example—in looking at Enquisite’s data, our international traffic is dominated by the U.S. and Canada, followed by the rest of the world. But when I filter by inquiries, the patterns change-and quite stunningly, mirror our conference appearances. Adding time and city constraints show an even tighter connection–we see visitors from Paris and areas around it after SES Paris last January; from Bavaria, where Search Marketing Expo Munich was held; and so on. Amazing.
Taking advantage of Map Overlays is easy. Open up your Longtail report and where the longtail graph appears, you’ll see a button that says “Map.” Click it, and watch as the longtail graph disappears, and the map comes into view. And if you create a view you’d like to go back to, just build and save those segments, then apply them to any future maps. How’s that for a much more efficient way to work?
We said before that we tackle the problems that help you turn data into action—so how does Map Overlays help you do just that? By giving you visual cues. Looking at rows and columns of data, it’s hard to spot areas that are not sending you traffic, but plot that same data on a map, and at-a-glance you can see where those holes are, and also which areas are unusually active.
So what do you do with this information? 1) Buy geo-targeted ads to test these markets, and 2) Get some links from geographic areas that are underperforming. An often-neglected search engine algorithm value is that of geographic links. For instance, if your site doesn’t have any links from Texas, your site will likely underperform in searches from that marketplace.
Which makes sense. If you don’t have any links from sites or businesses situated in Texas, then the search engines will assume that the subject matter on your site is not of interest to people there. Why would the engines show your site as well-placed or as often as another site with similar content and lots of links from Texas? They won’t. But unless you do the analysis, you’d never know that Texas was underperforming, nor would you know to concentrate at least a handful of link building efforts in Texas. By seeing the information on a map, you’re ready to immediately take action.
You like what you’re seeing here? It’s just a start. If you’re interested in learning more about how Enquisite can help you save time and do even cooler stuff with your campaigns, you should check out one of our sales engineer Joe’s weekly webinars. During the webinars, Joe answers questions, and demonstrates things you’ve likely never seen—and best of all, these educational training sessions are free!
Like I said before, these are some exciting times at Enquisite. We’re glad you’re here to take part in them. As always, please feel free to send me feedback, comments, or questions.
List of Amazing Cross Channel Contributors
July 28th, 2010 by Richard Zwicky
Over the last few days I’ve been publishing lists of people I read or whose online marketing comments I find useful / interesting. I hope you’ll add all these individuals to your bookmark list of people to turn to when you need advice across various search and online marketing disciplines.
The challenge with putting together any of these lists is to make sure that you don’t forget anyone. I have missed some along the way, and once I realized the error I added them to the appropriate list after publication.
There’s also some great contributors I wanted to note who write scant amounts themselves, but rather highlight great resources for others to read. Finally, there are some individuals who mainly contribute via public speaking engagements; they’re perhaps the most difficult to reference, as it’s hard for non-attendees to understand the context of the contributions.
On each of the earlier lists, I’ve had comments from people about why “XYZ” wasn’t on the list. In some cases it was an obvious error, in others, it’s because they fit on so many lists that I was saving them for this final one. The most obvious name in this category was Danny Sullivan. As I wrote in my first post, he really should be on everyone’s reading list! He contributes across so many areas, I could have included him throughout, so instead of listing him five times, I saved him for this list.
Today’s final list in this series is about amazing cross-channel contributors; I’ve tried to include mostly people who didn’t fit the other lists. Being on any of these lists reflects a very broad range of contributions to the industry. This list in particular is of people who have made contributions spanning multiple areas of online marketing. These people write authoritatively, OR, they provide commentary about areas of interest and point their listeners or readers in the direction of great, meaningful content. In the latter case, they’re like great filters for all of us, pointing people to the essential nuggets they should keep track of, but sometimes miss.
As this is the last list in the series, I’ll be closing voting on all the lists within a week, and then getting around to publishing some interesting results, with links to the places to find the best contributor’s content.
If you have any questions, feel free to email me: Richard Zwicky - zwicky@, tweet me @rzwicky, or leave a comment below.
If you’ve missed them, please read further down the blog for the prior lists of great online marketing contributors across SEO, PPC, SMM, and link-building!
Thanks again for participating!
Richard Zwicky
Tags: link building, linking strategies, marketer, marketers, Marketing, online marketing, ppc, referral traffic, search engine, Search Engines, SEM, SEO, SMM, social marketing
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