Google's Share of Searches Falling? Or Increasing?

prostoalex writes "Get two research companies in the room, and you'll likely end up with three opinions. Bear Sterns quotes ComScore Networks data, which says that Google's share of searches is slipping, down to 36.9% in June 2005. WebSideStory, a Web research company, on the other hand, claims that in June 2005 Google hit a new record as far as share of searches, hitting 52%, and leaving rivals far behind."

Comments

Bear Stearns using wrong metric.

[Tackhead]

> Bear Sterns quotes ComScore Networks data, which says that Google's share of searches is slipping, down to 36.9% in June 2005.

Slashdotter observes that ComScore Networks gets a lot of its data from a piece of software called "Marketscore", which sure sounds like a form of spyware.

Slashdotter hypothesizes that the people who prefer Google (over MSN, Yahoo, AOL, and the various "search engines" that are installed by spyware companies) are less likely to tolerate the presence of crap like "Marketscore" on their boxen.

Slashdotter suggests that analyst from Bear Stearns ought to look closely at the source of his data and ask pointed questions as to whether or not there are variables that cannot be measured by ComScore Networks, and whether or not these variables are skewing the data he's paying for.

Re:Bear Stearns using wrong metric.

[SuperQ]

marketscore IS spyware, even tho they claim it's not.. if you google for marketscore, the first two paid links are removal tools.

One of the really bad things marketscore does is install a certificate authority so it can proxy SSL requests without the user knowing. If they connect to a bank, or worse hippa regulated systems, marketscore gets to see all the traffic un-encrypted.

I know several places are tracking and blocking their subnets whenever possible.

Here's an entire paper on the thing:
http://www.cit.cornell.edu/computer/security/marke tscore/

Re:No meaning then.

[Nasarius]

The fact that studies say whether it's going up or down conflict each other, so they cancel all meaning either of them have.

Spoken like someone who has had no decent science education. The methodology of the study is critical. For example, one of the studies might have a very small sample size, in which case it's probably inaccurate.

Lies... Damn lies...

[sterno]

In the end, both numbers are probably correct according to the methodology that was used. The disparity is likely due to using vastly different methodologies.

Perhaps they used user surveys of on-line behavior. Perhaps they used traffic reports from popular sites to see where search hits came from. There's countless ways to figure it, but seeing as I can't remember the last time I used anything but google to do a search, I'd tend to favor the larger number.

Re:google simplicity

[Valiss]

Google's new features are cool, no doubt, but perhaps it is losing popularity due to the ever-increasingly complex interface.

Sure it is.

Google on Dec 02, 1998

Google on Jul 21, 2005

Re:google simplicity

[Dave2 Wickham]

http://search.yahoo.com/ is probably what you're looking for.

Re:Google Owns.

[walt-sjc]

FWIW, that's pretty close to the sites I've been working with that get several million hits a day consistantly. Our users are (depending on what site the user goes to) either general consumers or government / educational users so we get a pretty good mix. A third site is targeted towards large enterprise.

That report does not seem to mesh with reality. I'm actually surprised that MSN is so low due to the IE default home page - but it is.

Re:competitors?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously one nerd's experiences posted in the comments of a nerdy website are obviously representative of all of humanity, obviously. I mean it couldn't be more obvious.

Re:Someone said once that...

[Narchie Troll]

Twain attributed it to Benjamin Disraeli, actually.