Nielsen/Netratings released its latest list of top search engines and terms late in January. No big surprise: U.S. market share for Google, Yahoo Search, and MSN Search stayed steady, with none gaining any large advantages late in 2005.
What was a surprise, according to the press release, was that the top search terms are the names of well-known domains. E.g., people on www.google.com type "yahoo" into the search box to get to www.yahoo.com.
I actually first heard about this phenomenon last summer during SES, but I guess the trend has grown. Five of the top 10 search terms are the names of search engines, and the first topical search term ("weather") doesn't show up on the list until #23.
Contrary to what one would assume about the general search ignorance of users who do this, Nielsen/Netrankings explains, the phenomenon can also be attributed to searchers who are very Internet literate. You see, many people have a search engine site set as their start page, and when this page loads the cursor just goes to the search field automatically. Using the mouse to move the cursor to the address bar is an extra step, when typing the URL of a site into the search field works just as well to bring you directly to the site. So you're actually saving a click by navigating to another search engine by searching for it rather than typing the address in.
Neither the panelist nor the press release hazards a guess at what proportion of searchers who do this out of ignorance versus searchers who figured out how to shave another keystroke off their typing.
Labels: data
Posted by Melanie Phung
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Nielsen SE Rankings by Market Share
Nielsen/Netratings released its latest list of top search engines and terms late in January. No big surprise: U.S. market share for Google, Yahoo Search, and MSN Search stayed steady, with none gaining any large advantages late in 2005.
What was a surprise, according to the press release, was that the top search terms are the names of well-known domains. E.g., people on www.google.com type "yahoo" into the search box to get to www.yahoo.com.
I actually first heard about this phenomenon last summer during SES, but I guess the trend has grown. Five of the top 10 search terms are the names of search engines, and the first topical search term ("weather") doesn't show up on the list until #23.
Contrary to what one would assume about the general search ignorance of users who do this, Nielsen/Netrankings explains, the phenomenon can also be attributed to searchers who are very Internet literate. You see, many people have a search engine site set as their start page, and when this page loads the cursor just goes to the search field automatically. Using the mouse to move the cursor to the address bar is an extra step, when typing the URL of a site into the search field works just as well to bring you directly to the site. So you're actually saving a click by navigating to another search engine by searching for it rather than typing the address in.
Neither the panelist nor the press release hazards a guess at what proportion of searchers who do this out of ignorance versus searchers who figured out how to shave another keystroke off their typing.
Labels: data
Posted by Melanie Phung