Posts Tagged ‘search engine strategies’

Do You Know Which Referral Source Drives the Most Traffic

August 4th, 2010 by Richard Zwicky


As you may be aware, we collect a lot of data at Eightfold Logic, and have been doing so for a few years. Last week, I was looking at the lists of online marketers, and the voting numbers, and began to think about them in the context of traffic delivered, and its value. I had a broad sampling run from a swathe of web sites across industries and geographies to ascertain which channels deliver the most raw referral traffic. Later, in another post, I’ll dive into quality.

Sample size: 1 week of data, 36,164,959 unique referrals. (original sessions, excluding bots etc)

Referral Source
Search 24.04%
Links 16.64%
Social Media / Social Networking sites 1.56%
Everything Else (including Direct) 57.75%

It’s amazing how much marketing attention is focused on social considering the volume of referrals it drives to businesses, relative to other customer acquisition channels. However, it’s understood that used effectively, social is more about the pre-site-visit experience, and market awareness. That said, very few organizations are using social media marketing effectively. Effectively harnessing this inbound marketing channel opportunity will be of paramount importance going forward for companies to survive and succeed.

Richard Zwicky - @rzwicky


Bing Growing, Yahoo Steady - Search Engine Market Share Update

July 28th, 2010 by Richard Zwicky


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:

Google 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.


Whose Advice Works Best for Link Building?

July 27th, 2010 by Richard Zwicky

Over the last four work days, I’ve been publishing lists of people, broken out by online marketing disciplines.  These are individuals whose writings or commentaries I recommend that people should read to keep abreast of the industry.  I’ve broken them into areas of expertise as I saw fit - SEO thought-leaders, PPC experts, and strategic and tactical SMM thinkers.  I have two more groups I want to reference in this series: 1) Link-Building masters, and; 2) Cross-Channel contributors. Then I will start compiling the data for publication.

Today, it’s the link-builder’s turn.  These are all people I’ve read, and whose work I recommend you look at for link-building advice.  Some is tactical, some strategic, but it all has its place.  Presuming you already look at some, I’d like to know which 5 are the ones you reference the most often?

If you haven’t looked at the earlier lists, I’d suggest you look at them now.  For the Search Engine Optimization Experts list: SEO; For the list of PPC Experts, PPC; and for the list of top Social Media Marketers, SMM.


Whose Writings / Comments assist you the most with your Paid Search Marketing work?

July 23rd, 2010 by Richard Zwicky

Yesterday, I started a series of posts to answer a question I keep getting asked by people who are entering the industry, attending conferences, or even veterans looking for new sources of information: Whose writings I have found useful, by discipline?  Yesterday I posted about SEO writers

It’s easy for everyone to list off a few names, but there’s an incredible span of knowledge out there and experts in many different areas.  Unless you read a good, broad sampling, and not just the few same ones every day, you’re not going to become truly proficient in any one domain.  That’s because there’s always cross-over.  If you think that you can succeed as an SEO without properly understanding the fundamentals of the other disciplines, good luck to you.

Everyday, there is great new content being published, but these lists are about who do you find provides the most useful information for putting skills into practice?  The people whose contributions I find the most valuable may not publish daily or even weekly, but when they do, what they share is practical and either makes you consider something new, or provides you insights as to how to do something ever better!  Some will mostly use Twitter to highlight other people’s articles of interest for their own readers [or polls  ].

The list of people I know whose contributions I value is so large that I found that it was easier to create lists around themes, or concept groups.  Some people are better known than others, but that doesn’t mean their writings are more helpful: The reality is, some people are incredibly knowledgeable, and while they don’t write a lot, or do so with flair, what they write matters.

If there’s someone you think I’ve missed, send me a comment - I’m trying to recognize people by discipline, and it’s possibly I see them more in one concept group than another.  If you’re not on this list, perhaps you’ll be on one for another discipline, or perhaps your knowledge is so broad it’s hard to pin you into any one group! There’s also a few people who fit into two or more categories.

There is one person not on any of the lists on purpose:  Danny Sullivan.  I like him personally, and value and enjoy what he writes.  But, let’s face it, he’s on everyone’s reading list.

Top 5 Results will be published at a later date.

And if you haven’t looked at the list of SEO’s I’ve regularly turned to, please do so.


Search Engine Market Share Update

November 23rd, 2009 by Richard Zwicky

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:

Google 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.


Search Engine Market Shares 2007

March 16th, 2008 by Richard Zwicky

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.


Search Engine Strategies (SES) New York 2008

March 15th, 2008 by Richard Zwicky

I’m off to SES New York this evening. No, I don’t particularly enjoy red-eye flights.

On Monday at SES, I’ll be speaking on the Click Fraud and Click Auditing panel. Jeff Rohrs, Shuman Ghosemajumber, Tom Cuthbert and myself are the only carry-overs from the Click Fraud panels at SES Chicago last December. As Tom didn’t have a powerpoint last time, I look forward to him bringing forward some new data. I’ve got an entirely new presentation, with perhaps only one holdover graphic. I hope those of you who will be there will enjoy it!

Two weeks ago, Shuman and I had lunch at the Googleplex. We discussed a lot of things, and I only realize now that one thing we didn’t discuss was this panel at SES NY, other than to say “see you there.”

On Wednesday, I’m also moderating a late session on Searcher Behavior. I’m looking forward to moderating this particular session as I’ve spoken on it a few times, and the change from speaker to moderator on this topic should be interesting.

If you’re at SES New York, please do say hello, come check out the sessions, and ask lots of questions.