More Searching, Less Communicating

According to Nielsen NetRatings and the Online Publishers Association, the proportion of time users are spending on search-related activities increased noticeably at the end of 2007, at the expense of communication activities like email and IM.

Labels: data, user behavior

Posted by Melanie Phung

Internet/Search/User Behavior Data, Stats, Reports

So I'm finding myself putting together a lot of PowerPoint presentations lately, and that has necessitated a search for interesting data and charts. Of course, the data that are publicly available (i.e., free) are always almost exactly what I need, but never exactly what I'm looking for. If I'm looking for info on B2C search spending, for example, inevitably I find awesome data on B2B search spending. Or, if I'm looking for top search destination categories, I'll find data on categories experiencing the most search growth year over year, but no totals.

But I figure all those hours spent looking at search engine usage factoids should at least result in a blog post.

Need data on online user behavior, search engine market share stats, e-commerce or Internet industry research? Start here:

• Pew Internet & American Life Project: press releases, reports
  
• Jupiter Research, including Search Marketing and Online Behavior and Demographics
• comScore press releases
• Nielsen NetRatings and Nielsen BuzzMetrics
• HitWise press releases and Data Center, including political stats and top search terms
• Compete's blog
  
• iProspect research and press releases
• Forrester Research - free reports (registration required)
• iCrossing - registration required
  
• IDC press releases
• Yankee Group
  
• IT Facts data on tech and Internet and search-engine specific data
• ZDNet research roundup - collection of data from other sources
• ClickZ Web stats and trends articles
  
• eMarketer articles and research excerpts
• Online Publishers Association (OPA) research library and industry news
• NetCraft - mostly Internet security related facts
• Harris Interactive/Harris polls - not tech-specific, but has an occasional tidbit
• PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) press releases - requires some digging

Labels: data, industry buzz, user behavior

Posted by Melanie Phung

Library Vs. Internet - Which Do People Consult More?

True or False: Members of Gen Y are less likely to use libraries to find answers to problems than previous generations.

According to Pew, millenials are actually the leading users of libraries for help solving problems, as well as more general patronage.

Another insight from the December 2007 study is that more people turn to the Internet than consult experts or family members to provide information and resources for answers to common problems (with the exception of some specific topics such as health, thank Heavens).

Labels: data, user behavior

Posted by Melanie Phung

2007 Search Statistics

ComScore's Year in Review press release seems to underscore the principle that the rich keep getting richer: Google, of course, saw more gains, as did Wikipedia (which some conspiracy theorists seem to think is in cahoots with Google somehow) and Craigslist.

Facebook traffic jumped 81% year over year to 34.7 million visitors, now that registration is open to non-students (including quite a few pets, if Stewie's ever growing circle of Facebook friends is any indication).

The release goes on to say that "the top-gaining site categories in 2007 reflected trends in both the online and offline worlds. The politics category grabbed the top position, gaining 35%, as the 2008 presidential election and primary season kicked into high gear." Not to be outdone by current events of any gravity, sites devoted to celebrity entertainment news, "from Britney Spears' meltdowns to Anna Nicole Smiths death," kept up with an equally impressive 32% increase in visitors.

In total -- including all searches for Britney, Anna Nicole and even "poop porn" -- more than 113 billion core searches were conducted in the U.S. last year, with Google representing a 56% share of the market.

Labels: data, Google, social media, user behavior

Posted by Melanie Phung

Journalists Look to Blogs for Ideas, Perspectives

Lee Odden reports on a new study by Omnicom Group's Brodeur and Marketwire about how journalists use blogs.

He reports on WebProNews that:

• Over three quarters of reporters see blogs as helpful in giving them story ideas, story angles and insight into the tone of an issue
  
• Nearly 70% of all reporters check a blog list on a regular basis
  
• One in four reporters (27.7%) have their own blogs
  
• About one in five (16.3%) have their own social networking page
  
• Almost half of reporters (47.5%) say they are "lurkers"
  
• Over half said that blogs were having a significant impact on the “tone” (61.8%) and "editorial direction" (51.1%) of news reporting

Labels: blogging, data

Posted by Melanie Phung

Search Engine Market Share for May 2007

Nielsen//NetRatings today reported its market share data for the top 10 search engines. Google, no surprise, continues to lead with Nielsen NetRatings reporting 4.03 billion searches having been conducted on Google last month. That translates to nearly 45% year over year growth and 56.3% of total U.S. market share.

Yahoo Search is in second place with a little over 1.5 billion searches and 21.5% of the total. MSN trails a distant third with only 8.4% of all U.S. searches conducted on the Windows Live search engine. Rounding out the top 5 search engines are AOL Search and Ask.com, with 5.3% and 2.5% of search market share, respectively.

At the bottom of the list is the search aggregator Dogpile, which saw fewer net searches than the previous year, with year over year growth a -10.6%.

HitWise, a competing market research firm, also released its May search data today. According to HitWise, in May Google captured a whopping 65.1% of all U.S. searches, up from 59.3% last year. The number of searches attributed by HitWise to Yahoo are in line with Nielsen's data: 20.9%, a figure that's down slightly from May 2006. And MSN/Live Search garnered 8.4% of searches, down from 12.1% of marketshare 12 months prior.

Ask.com fared a little better based on HitWise data, with 3.9% of the market compared to 2.5% that Nielsen reported. Either way, IAC's Ask.com continues to lose market share to the bigger players.

Labels: data, Google, user behavior, Yahoo

Posted by Melanie Phung

June Is Internet Safety Month

Okay, so the month is already half over, and it's a non-binding resolution, and there isn't any funding to support any initiatives, but U.S. legislators (well, a hundred of them at least) are really, really serious about keeping us safe from cybercrime: I just learned the Senate passed a resolution designating June as 'National Internet Safety Month'. Wait, let me be more specific -- June 2007 is National Internet Safety Month. And to think I wasted the last two weeks not celebrating Internet safety.

The full text of the resolution reads:

Whereas there are more than 1,000,000,000 Internet users worldwide;

Whereas, in the United States, 35,000,000 children in kindergarten through grade 12 have Internet access;

Whereas approximately 80 percent of the children of the United States in grades 5 through 12 are online for at least 1 hour per week;

Whereas approximately 41 percent of students in grades 5 through 12 do not share with their parents what they do on the Internet;

Whereas approximately 24 percent of students in grades 5 through 12 have hidden their online activities from their parents;

Whereas approximately 31 percent of the students in grades 5 through 12 have the skill to circumvent Internet filter software;

Whereas 61 percent of the students admit to using the Internet unsafely or inappropriately;

Whereas 20 percent of middle school and high school students have met face-to-face with someone they first met online;

Whereas 23 percent of students know someone who has been bullied online;

Whereas 56 percent of parents feel that online bullying of children is an issue that needs to be addressed;

Whereas 47 percent of parents feel that their ability to monitor and shelter their children from inappropriate material on the Internet is limited; and

Whereas 61 percent of parents want to be more personally involved with Internet safety: Now, therefore, be it


Resolved, That the Senate--

(1) designates June 2007 as `National Internet Safety Month';

(2) recognizes that National Internet Safety Month provides the citizens of the United States with an opportunity to learn more about--

(A) the dangers of the Internet; and

(B) the importance of being safe and responsible online;

(3) commends and recognizes national and community organizations for--

(A) promoting awareness of the dangers of the Internet; and

(B) providing information and training that develops critical thinking and decision-making skills that are needed to use the Internet safely; and

(4) calls on Internet safety organizations, law enforcement, educators, community leaders, parents, and volunteers to increase their efforts to raise the level of awareness for the need for online safety in the United States.

Labels: data

Posted by Melanie Phung

30% of Cell Phone Users Search the Net on Their Phones

A study released last month determined that only 30% of Internet users access the mobile Internet on their devices. The study is based on a series of focus groups and a survey of 1,001 mobile users. Of those who do surf the mobile Web, a whopping 75% use mobile search. No stats on how many people actually do any shopping from their cell phone. My guess is close to zero. (Surfing an e-commerce site and entering your credit card info on a PDA would be the suck.)

Labels: data, mobile content, user behavior

Posted by Melanie Phung

January 2007 Search Market Share - ComScore

ComScore recently released its January figures for search engine market share among U.S. Internet users.

According to comScore's research, Google captured 47.5% of the U.S. search market, gaining 0.2 points from the previous month. Yahoo maintained its second place ranking with 28.1% of U.S. searches, but lost 0.4% from the previous month. With a slight gain, Microsoft search was used for 10.6% of U.S. searches. Ask Network and AOL Time Warner claimed about half that with 5.2% and 5.0% respectively.

Labels: data, Yahoo

Posted by Melanie Phung

Where Blog Readers Go Next

Sally Falkow reports over at BizCommunity.com (a South African website) that MySpace is driving more traffic to other sites than MSN Live Search. And after visiting blogs users head off to these other types of sites:

• Social networks (17%)
  
• Entertainment sites (15%)
  
• Email (11%)
  
• Lifestyle sites (9.8%)
  
• Search engines (6.2%)
  
• News sites (6.1%)
  
• Blogs (5.9%)
  
• Photography sites (5.2%)
  
• Portals (4.5%)
  
• Shopping sites (4%)

Labels: data

Posted by Melanie Phung

December Search Stats - comScore and Compete

According to just-released data from Compete, Google continues to gain search market share at everyone else's expense (yawn, what else is new), everyone but AOL that is. Now there's a twist. Is AOL the little search engine that could? Well, no. While it's market share might not have declined last month, it's still in a distant fourth place, with no hope of catching up, unless something dramatic happens in the search landscape. And then there's the issue of AOL not using proprietary search technology.

ComScore released its own market share findings this week as well. According to comScore's press release,

In December 2006, Google Sites captured 47.3 percent of the U.S. search market, gaining 0.4 share points from the previous month. Yahoo! Sites grew 0.3 share points, maintaining its second place ranking with 28.5 percent of U.S. searches, followed by Microsoft Sites (10.5 percent), Ask Network (5.4 percent) and Time Warner Network (4.9 percent).

Labels: data, Google, Yahoo

Posted by Melanie Phung

Google Now Second-Most Visited Site in the World

According to ComScore, displaced Yahoo as the world's second-most-visited Web site in November. Visitors to Google's sites rose 9.1 percent year-over-year, to 475.7 million in November 2006, just edging out Yahoo site visits which rose 5.2 percent, to 475.3 million. Microsoft, in the meantime maintains its lead with 501.7 million worldwide visitors last month, according to the market research company.

Google was able to edge out Yahoo due to its growing international popularity; Yahoo contines to receive more visits than Google within the United States.

Labels: data

Posted by Melanie Phung

4.4% of Search Engine Results Unsafe

Ars Technica reports an update to a May 2006 study on the safety of search engine results:

Security researcher Ben Edelman has revisited his May 2006 report on the relative risk of search engine results. In the original report, Edelman found that 5 percent of the results provided by search engines ... presented some risk to the user. Now, Edelman says that his new study has shown that only 4.4 percent of such sites are risky, representing a drop of 12 percent since May.

Labels: data

Posted by Melanie Phung

Only 3 out of 100 Sites Meet Accessibility Standard

According to a report released by the United Nations, 97 of the 100 Web sites examined failed to meet minimum accessibility levels for the reading impared (those who are blind or have low-vision disabilities) or individuals who cannot use a computer mouse .

The study looked at five sectors intended to reflect a key area of interaction for people online, and sites from 20 countries were chosen to represent those sectors, forming a matrix of 100 Web sites to be included in the audit. The homepage of each Web site was measured against the W3C's benchmark for accessibility.

Of the 100 homepages evaluated during the audit, only three reached those minimum standards. Among the findings:

• 93% did not provide adequate text descriptions for graphical content, causing problems for visually impaired people
• 73% relied on JavaScript for important functionality, making it impossible for an estimated 10% of Internet users using the Internet to access key information
• 78% used foreground and background color combinations with poor contrast, making it difficult for people with mild visual conditions, such as color blindness, to read information
• 98% did not follow industry Web standards for the programming code, providing poor foundations for Web accessibility
• 97% used fixed units of measurement, preventing people from altering the size of text or comfortably resizing the page so that content can be easily scaled
• 89% failed to use the correct technique for conveying document structure through the use of headings, making page navigation awkward for many visually impaired people
• 87% caused pop-up windows to appear without warning the user, causing disorientation problems for people using screen magnification software

However, the study, Nomensa, found that a quarter of the Web sites investigated could be brought into line with the international standards quickly and for little expense.

More background on the report.

Labels: data

Posted by Melanie Phung

Social Media Contributing to Retail Sales

Hitwise did a webinar today covering social media networks and their relevance to retail traffic. The research company says that sites like MySpace, Facebook and others have become jumping-off points for people to get to a retailer site; up to 5% of the upstream traffic to online businesses came from a social network. (Email, by comparison, drives traffic at nearly twice that rate.)

But to keep it in perspective: 25% of traffic to retail sites starts with a query in a search box, according to the same research company.

Labels: data, search marketing, social media

Posted by Melanie Phung

ROI on Incremental Position Gains

In the last 12 months as an in-house SEO, my Holy Grail of Web analytics has been quantifying what each gain in position (i.e., ranking on results page) is worth. It's a hard thing to just test since there are so many variables beyond your control. Clearly the first position is more valuable than the third, which is more valuable than the seventh. But how much more valuable?

Each rise in rankings gets exponentially harder the closer you to the top. So, would my goals be better served if I prioritized moving a listing from the #11 spot to the #10 spot, or should I try to get a current #5 listing to move up position #4? Or what if I tried to get a bunch of Page 3 listings onto Page 2 -- would half a dozen pages on the second page be worth more than a one position increase on the first page? If my optimizing a page a certain way moves it from the #5 spot to the #3 spot but causes a 1% drop in conversion, is it worth it? What about from #4 to #3 -- would it still make sense to sacrifice one point in conversions to go after traffic?

Thanks to the AOL snafu, SEOs now have a little more visibility into search user behavior.

It should come as no big surprise that 50% of searches result in clicks on the top 2 results. That still doesn't answer any of the questions I posed above.

But by analyzing AOL's treasure trove of user data, and based on some data shared in EarnersForum.com the folks over at SEO Black Hat have come up with a tool that attempts to quanitify the value of each position change (in terms of traffic, not $).

From the forum:
Based on 9,038,794 and 4,926,623 total clicks:

• Ranking Number 1 receives 42.1 percent of click throughs.
  
• Ranking Number 2 receives 11.9 percent of click throughs.
  
• Ranking Number 3 receives 8.5 percent of click throughs.
  
• Ranking Number 4 receives 6.1 percent of click throughs.
  
• Ranking Number 5 receives 4.9 percent of click throughs.
  
• Ranking Number 6 receives 4.1 percent of click throughs.
  
• Ranking Number 7 receives 3.4 percent of click throughs.
  
• Ranking Number 8 receives 3.0 percent of click throughs.
  
• Ranking Number 9 receives 2.8 percent of click throughs.
  
• Ranking Number 10 receives 3.0 percent of click throughs.
  
• The rest of the Long Tail (ranks 11-1000) = 11.3 percent of click throughs.

• Search Engine Ranking #1: 2,075,765 clicks
  
• Search Engine Ranking #2: 586,100 clicks = 3.5x less
  
• Search Engine Ranking #3: 418,643 clicks = 4.9x less
  
• Search Engine Ranking #4: 298,532 clicks = 6.9x less
  
• Search Engine Ranking #5: 242,169 clicks = 8.5x less
  
• Search Engine Ranking #6: 199,541 clicks = 10.4x less
  
• Search Engine Ranking #7: 168,080 clicks = 12.3x less
  
• Search Engine Ranking #8: 148,489 clicks = 14.0x less
  
• Search Engine Ranking #9: 140,356 clicks = 14.8x less
  
• Search Engine Ranking #10 147,551 clicks = 14.1x less
  
• Search Engine Ranking 11+: 501,397 clicks

Labels: data

Posted by Melanie Phung

17 Million out of 20 Million Searches Are for "Free"

The Wall Street Journal quantified the leaked AOL data to reveal that over 17 million separate searches (out of 20 million) involved the search for something "free." Free was followed by "new," "lyrics," "county," "school," "city," "home," "state," "pictures," "music," "sale," "high," "map," "center," and a three letter word that starts in "s" and ends with "x."

On the other hand, the Washington Post says that out of more then 36 million search queries, the term most often queried... drum roll... "Google."

Huh? Are we talking single-query searches or each keyword separately even if part of a phrase? Need to think a bit harder about how exactly that works out because the "truthiness" of it is suspect (unless a lot of people were searching for "free Google" and/or the two papers are looking at different sets of users).

As for the phenomenon of people using one search engine to search for another... well, that's been covered before.

Labels: data

Posted by Melanie Phung

HitWise Market Share Stats for July 2006

Hitwise stated on Thursday that Google, Yahoo Search and MSN accounted for nearly 95% of all searches in the United States in July.

Of Internet searches conducted in the U.S., 60.2% were handled by Google, up from 59.3% in June. In the same period, Yahoo Search went from 22.0% market share to 22.5%. Meanwhile, the #3 engine MSN Search saw a dip falling to just below 12% last month.

Labels: data

Posted by Melanie Phung

Counting Conversions and Assists

New research by search marketing firm 360i and paid search provider SearchIgnite examines search behavior leading to conversions. According to their research, 37.3% of transactions were completed with at least one "assist" click prior to the click that resulted in the sale. However, "many marketers are looking at the last click before a conversion and crediting it entirely. Most 'assists' are being ignored," said one of the study's authors.

The study also shows that searchers were more likely to start with a paid result and convert after a click on a natural result. That scenario accounted for 12.6% of conversions credited to natural search results, more than twice as many as natural-to-paid paths produced," according to the ClickZ article about this study.

Labels: data

Posted by Melanie Phung

7 out of 10 Searchers Using More Than 2 Words Per Search

OneStat.com this week reported that fewer and fewer people are conducting single keyword queries as the Internet population as a whole is getting more sophisticated. In fact, in the United States, searchers are predominantly using 3- and 4-word search phrases. According to the OneStat study, search behavior broke out like this:

1. 3 word phrases 28.83%
2. 4 word phrase 22.28%
3. 2 word phrases 20.43%
4. 5 word phrases 11.97%
5. 1 word phrases 6.19%
6. 6 word phrases 5.76%
7. 7 word phrases 2.59%

Any good SEO will have been optimizing for search phrases all along, but given that only about 6.19% of U.S. Internet users are conducting searches on single words, and more than half are using more than two words, that gives us more ammunition when faced with the inevitable "Why aren't we ranked #1 for [insert ridiculously competitive keyword here]?" Not only is optimizing for single keywords not very effective, nor do single-keyword searches result in quality traffic and conversions, but there also are now so few people are doing them that optimizing for 2- and 3-word phrases can no longer be considered chasing "the tail." (Think of it like this: The tail is the new black.)

Labels: data

Posted by Melanie Phung

Google Takes 50% Market Share in June

It's not on the Nielsen/NetRatings website yet, but the company's latest press release summarizes marketshare of June's search traffic.

In the words of MarketingVox (why put this all in my own words if someone else has already summarized it): Google searches totaled an estimated 2.67 billion, up 31% from June 2005 and accounting for 49.4% of all U.S. searches conducted in June, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. Yahoo followed with 23.0% of searches, or 1.24 billion, up 29% a year ago. MSN was third with 10.3% of searches, or 556 million, an increase of only 3% year over year. AOL and Ask.com rounded out the top 5, with 371 million and 126 million searches - and 6.9% and 2.3% share - respectively.

Labels: data

Posted by Melanie Phung

2.8 Billion Searches Conducted on Google in May

Nielsen/NetRatings just released its May marketshare figures for the search market. According to Nielsen, Google pulled in just a little over 49% of last month's searches (down from 49.8% the previous month), or roughly 2.8 billion queries. Yahoo followed with a 22.9% share and 1.3 billion searches. MSN Search, with 600 million searches, lagged in third place with 10.6%.

Total number of searches, however, was up dramatically for all of the top search engines. Yahoo, for example, handled 34% more queries than it did 12 months ago and says the battle for search industry dominance is just getting started. "We're three steps into a marathon," according to Yahoo executive Bradley Horowitz, the company's vice president of product strategy.

Labels: data

Posted by Melanie Phung

Google at Nearly 60% Marketshare

Hitwise released search engine marketshare figures for the month of May: Google reeled in 59.3% of all searchers for the four-week period. Yahoo took 22% of search queries, while 12.1% of searches were conducted using MSN Search. These numbers refer to U.S. search activity.

Labels: data, Google

Posted by Melanie Phung

Pew Internet Project: Broadband Is Mainstream

Let's catch up on news from the Pew Internet and American Life Project. According to their latest studies, home broadband adoption has become mainstream:

• Internet penetration has now reached 73% for all American adults. At the end of March 2006, 42% of Americans had high-speed at home, 40% increase over last year.
• About 60 million Americans say that the Internet helped them make big decisions or negotiate their way through major episodes in their lives in the previous two years (what votes to cast for American Idol, for example)¹
• By the end of 2005, 50 million Americans got news online on a typical day, a sizable increase since 2002 (which is also the year American Idol premiered). For a group of "high-powered" online users -- early adopters of home broadband who are the heaviest Internet users -- the Internet is their primary news source on the average day.
• And 48 million Americans -- mostly those with high-speed at home -- have posted content to the Internet.
• Overall, 35% of all Internet users have posted one or more of four types of content to the Internet: having one's own blog; having one's own webpage; working on a blog or webpage for work or a group; or sharing self-created content such as a story, artwork, or video.²
• An even higher percentage of home broadband users -- 42% or about 31 million people -- have posted content to the Internet. They account for 73% of home Internet users who were the source of online content.
• Sharing a variety of creations online is among the most popular kinds of user-generated content. Overall, 36 million Internet users have shared their own artwork, photos, stories, or videos on the internet. That comes to 26% of Internet users. Home broadband users account for about two-thirds of this number.

Labels: data

Posted by Melanie Phung

State of the Blogosphere: Q1 2006

Dave Sifry's overview of the world of blogs includes the astounding estimate that the number of blogs has doubled nearly every 6 months for the last 3 years, meaning the Blogosphere is 60 times bigger than it was in the spring of 2003. The current growth rate is one new blog per second, with 55% (19.4 million) of those blogs having a lifespan of more than 3 months.

Sifry's next "State of the Blogosphere" post promises to talk about the tagging phenomenon. Given how large the blog world has grown, one would really expect it to somewhat spontaneously organize itself somehow. Tagging, of course, is one way to organize content - by topic. And I suppose awards like The Webbies pull together the highest quality sites from a range of categories, at least at the elite level -- you'll be able to peruse the latest crop of Webby Award winners when they are announced May 9 -- but that's not really self-organization.

Since I don't believe I blogged about some of the new features Technorati released a while back, this would be a good time to point out that you can sort your Technorati searches by levels of "authority." Your blogs authority is measured by.... you guessed it: how many other posts link to yours.

Think of it like the New York Times Best Sellers List. The more attention you get, the more attention people think you deserve.

(One day soon there will also be the equivalent of an Oprah's Book Club for blogs ... a way to make blogs even more accessible to those who like their hands held through their media consumption.)

Labels: blogging, data

Posted by Melanie Phung

comScore Releases March Market Share Stats

comScore's latest release shows that the number of search queries rose and, once again, Google not only leads the pack but takes market share from its competitors.

Other highlights:

• Americans conducted 6.4 billion searches online in March, up 10% from last month and 15% from last year. The increase in search queries from the previous month marked the largest gain over the past 12 months.


• Google Sites led the pack with 2.7 billion search queries performed, followed by Yahoo Sites (1.8 billion), MSN-Microsoft (849 million), Time-Warner Network (486 million), and Ask Jeeves/Ask Network (376 million).


• The toolbar search market continues to be dominated by Google and Yahoo, which combined for more than 95% of toolbar searches in March. Google led the way with 48.9%, while Yahoo captured 46.5%.

Labels: data, Google, Yahoo

Posted by Melanie Phung

Ad Spending Up for 'Alternative Media'

WebProNews reports on a study from the Center for Media Research about the growth of advertising in user-generated media:

Blog ads, podcast ads, RSS ads, oh my, it could be a $50 million dollar
market by the time 2006 comes to an end, well over the $20.4 million
spent for advertising on those syndication methods in 2005.

• Blog advertising comprised 81.4%, or $16.6 million, of total spending on user-generated online media in 2005; blog ads will reach $300.4 million, but only account for 39.7%, of overall spending in 2010
  
• Advertising networks ($8.0 million) and click-throughs ($7.8 million) are the largest ad insertion methods
  
• Total spending on user-generated online media is forecast to grow at a compound annual rate of 106.1%, to reach $757.0 million, by 2010
  
• The media industry spent $3.2 million on advertising in user-generated media in 2005

Labels: data

Posted by Melanie Phung

Google Holds 75% of UK Market Share

According to the marketing analysis firm WebSideStory, Google referred 74.67% of all U.K. visitors to other sites on the web in February. That's compared to under 10% of UK market share for its nearest competitor Yahoo.

"Even more so in the U.K. than in the U.S., when people think of search, they think of Google," said Rand Schulman, Chief Marketing Officer for WebSideStory.

Rounding out the Top 5 in terms of search referrals were Yahoo (9.30%), MSN (5.46%), AOL (4.21%) and Ask Jeeves (2.28%).

Labels: data, Google

Posted by Melanie Phung

5.3 Billion Searches in February

Statistics are no fun if everyone agrees. Nielsen/Netratings says Google captured 48.5% of the 5.3 billion searches conducted in February. According to Nielsen's numbers, both Google and Yahoo (at 22.5%) increased their share at the expense of MSN Search. AOL Search (6.6%) and My Way Search (2.7%) come in at numbers 4 and 5. Not making an appearance on this top 5 list is Ask.com.

5.3 billion searches were conducted in February, up from 3.8 billion during the same period last year. Nielsen attributes this growth largely to the increased number of searches per user, particularly image searches and shopping searches: "In February 2005, the average Web user ran 33.2 searches; by this February, that number had climbed to 43.1 searches, increasing 30% year over year. In contrast, the number of unique searchers increased year over year by just 6%."

Labels: data

Posted by Melanie Phung

Everyone's Writing, But Who's Reading Blogs?

David Utter of WebProWorld reports on a survey conducted by Gallup: blog readership is flat or declining.

A scant 9 percent of users read blogs frequently, with 11 percent reading them occasionally. Out of the 13 activities Gallup measured in its poll, reading blogs finished dead last.

Labels: blogging, data

Posted by Melanie Phung

One-Third of Web Users Just 'Hanging Out'

The Pew Internet & American Life Project, which has been documenting the social impact of the Internet, released the results of a new survey last week. According to Pew, nearly one-third of American Internet users go online just for fun on a typical day rather than to check email, read news or use a search engine. That's a sharp increase over the number who responded this way a year ago.

"Hanging out" is now the third most popular activity on the Net, after emailing and using search engines. (If email, catching up on news, and searching for stuff doesn't count as "just for fun," what does?)

Conversely, two-thirds of respondents said they've tried at one time surfing the Web just to pass the time -- meaning that one-third (of Internet users!) have never used the Internet just for fun. Well, guess that's just more bandwidth for the rest of us.

Labels: data

Posted by Melanie Phung

State of the Blogosphere - Part II

Dave Sifry has reported on the state of the blogosphere, and folks, the State of the Blogosphere is strong.

He points out that attention has been shifting in the blogosphere. Mainstream media stalwarts like The New York Times, CNN, and The Washington Post [which he calls the "big head" (in contrast with the "long tail")] continue to dominate, but the long tail of the blogging world goes out to 27.8 million blogs.

Sifry summarized his post in bullet points:

• Blogging and Mainstream Media continue to share attention in blogger's and reader's minds, but bloggers are climbing higher on the "big head" of the attention curve, with some bloggers getting more attention than sites including Forbes, PBS, MTV, and the CBC.


• Continuing down the attention curve, blogs take a more and more significant position as the economics of the mainstream publishing models make it cost prohibitive to build many nice sites and media


• Bloggers are changing the economics of the trade magazine space, with strong entries covering WiFi, Gadgets, Internet, Photography, Music, and other nice topic areas, making it easier to thrive, even on less aggregate traffic.


• There is a network effect in the Technorati Top 100 blogs, with a tendency to remain highly linked if the blogger continues to post regularly and with quality content.


• Looking at the historical data shows that the inertia in the Top 100 is very low - in other words, the number of new blogs jumping to the top of the Top 100 as well as the blogs that have fallen out of the top 100 show that the network effect is relatively weak.


• The Magic Middle is the 155,000 or so weblogs that have garnered between 20 and 1,000 inbound links. [Great, only 19 more links to go.] It is a realm of topical authority and significant posting and conversation within the blogosphere.

Labels: blogging, data

Posted by Melanie Phung

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

One Billion (with a B!) Internet Users

What's happening to the common denominator as the population of Internet users continues to mushroom? How will the trends affect your online business?

Jakob Nielsen — usability guru and publisher of the not-coincidentally- but-yet-unnecessarily ugliest professional website ever — writes about the fact that the number of Internet users in the world has surpassed 1 billion. Based on Morgan Stanley estimates, he reports: "It took 36 years for the Internet to get its first billion users. The second billion will probably be added by 2015; most of these new users will be in Asia."

I believe the rest of the numbers are all lifted directly from the Morgan Stanley report, but the report itself is a 60-page PDF née PowerPoint presentation that takes ages to download. So I'm going to prove Nielsen's point that users don't bother to look at slow-loading pages by not downloading their presentation to check. So if you're into fact-checking and that sort of thing, the presentation is available on the Morgan Stanley site under Technology Research.

Analysts are predicting e-commerce sales will at least double from their current level when more of the existing generation of users starts shopping online. Nielsen points out "Users are not like you, and the difference between elite and mainstream users is getting bigger every day...This means that for e-commerce to fulfill its potential to double, sites must be more systematic at following the e-commerce usability guidelines." The emphasis is taken from the original, so I'll add my own emphasis: Users Are Not Like You.

"You" in this case would be the type of people who run and design websites, who use the Internet to sell or advertise their own products and services, etc. As important as it has been, it's going to be even more important moving forward that e-commerce website design focus first and foremost on the user experience. ("User" in this case being people not like you.)

Labels: data

Posted by Melanie Phung

How Much Are Searchers Worth?

I reported earlier that Gates prophesized search engines will be paying Web surfers to use their services at some point. He's said it again, and people are reading between the lines to conclude that he's hinting MSN Search will do this soon.

WebProNews says another spokesperson, however, said Microsoft had no immediate plans to start paying users. And consulting company Ovum reminds us:

Payment for viewing ads is a tactic that has been tried before, and is fundamentally flawed. There were in the tech boom a number of attempts to make this model work, including in the US offers of low or no cost PCs for users prepared to view lots of ads and/or click though on them. The fundamental flaw is that the advertisers want people who have money to spend on their goods and services. This generally excludes people who are prepared to spend hours on their computer viewing ads and following clicking-throughs.

Labels: data

Posted by Melanie Phung

IM Overtaking Email

Not about search, but just Internet user behavior, here's a bit from the WebProNews email newsletter: IM Becoming Medium Of Choice

Instant messaging is overtaking email as the preferred way to communicate, especially among teens and young adults. Overall, IM's are up 19 percent year over year, with many Americans sending as many, if not more, IM's than they do emails, according to AOL's Instant Messaging Trends Survey.

• Across the globe, 300 million people regularly use instant messaging
  
• 38% of survey respondents send more IMs than emails
  
• 66% of teens and young adults send more IMs than emails
  
• 58% of IM users use it to interact with colleagues
  
• 29% of IM users use it to interact with customers
  
• 12% have used it to avoid face-to-face confrontation
  
• Nearly half of IM users ages 13-21 change their away message every day

Labels: data

Posted by Melanie Phung

1 Mil. Videos Downloaded From Apple Site

Apple just sent out a press release announcing that they've sold more than one million video downloads through the iTunes Music Store. Story at Engadget, among many other places.

How's that related to search? It's not. But remember, this blog is all about content.

Labels: data

Posted by Melanie Phung