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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."
IT's far more important _which_ searches they're getting. In my online advertising efforts, the quality of traffic coming from Google is FAR superior to what we're getting out of MSN, AOL, etc.
Well if the amount of searches google is getting is going down -- you have to account for where they are going.
Are the lost searches going to elsewhere to altavista, ask jeeves, dogpile?
How can you conduct research if you can't account for where the "lost searches" have gone to? How can they tell it's not an error in their study?
How could anyone get conclusive results without operating inside of google, and inside of yahoo? It seems to me like the *best* you can do is have a bunch of websites log what URL's they're coming from, but that's inconclusive; some users will use one search engine repeatedly just to find an article, while other's will search for the same thing across a lot of search engines.
I just don't see how anyone could come to a result that's completely objective.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Have Google searches replaced DNS for web name lookup? Not yet, you say? Then they aren't the most popular search engine yet!
Do you like Japanese imports?
The numbers -- for those interested.
Google's market share of US searches for June 2005 was at 36.9% compared with 37.5% in May 2005. Yahoo! had a 30.4% share, and MSN had a share of 15.7%. Bear Stearns noted that Google's query volume rose 36% YTY versus a 28% increase for the industry, outpacing Yahoo!'s 32% increase but trailing MSN's 42% increase. Month-to-month, Google's query volume declined 6%, which compares with a 4% decline for Yahoo!, a 1% decline for MSN, a 4% decline for AOL, and a 7% decline for Ask Jeeves. In Q2 2005 unique searchers versus Q2 2004 increased 31% for Google, 21% for Yahoo, and 14% for the industry, while the number of searches in Q2 2005 increased 38% for Google, 42% for Yahoo, and 31% for the industry.
Reading these comments here all I can say is you guys are so brainwashed by the Google hype machine.
First, Google is NOT an innovator. Why not? Everything they do is a slight improvement on existing services:
- Search: Sure, it's the best search around, but it is simply an improvement over existing search services. And by now Yahoo's search is comparable. Soon there will be many equivalent search engines.
- Maps: Looks pretty, but it's just an incremental improvement over existing services. Trivial for Yahoo or anyone else to catch up.
- GMail: Nothing to see here except very good marketing. Who ever uses 1 GB of email? Nobody.
A lot of Google's services actually suck if you think about it. Froogle? Google Images? Those are a joke. And thanks for breaking Google Groups to make it unusable.
If you think Google is the greatest thing since sliced bread, take a deep breath and realize that it's just a company that is very good at marketing, and making lots of money.
Google is an advertising company, they are not a technology company. They are not true innovators like, say, Apple or Oracle. Just look at the reasons I outlined above to understand why. A true innovator ushers in a new age. Like Apple with the iPod and digital music. Or Oracle with database systems. Google hasn't ushered in a new age of anything.
Stop the hype.
There are lies, damn lies and statistics. Personally I can't remember the last time I used something other than Google for a search and what other search engine has had it's name verbed in common usage? Even back in the day when AltaVista was the search engine of choice I never heard anyone say "AltaVista it".
here's another that says gooogle has 48% http://searchenginewatch.com/reports/article.php/2 156451
nice graph, with results for many other search engines as well
Well, I often find myself using a different search enging because I get 'page contains no data' when I try to search.
Also, the quick search tool in Firefox often doesn't work because we are automatically transferred to a Chinese version of Google. You have to select the 'English' link, then search again.
Sometimes it just isn't worth the hassle. More and more, I am using Yahoo!.
Who has entered the search business recently?
Are you surpriesed to begin to see sponsored
research and bought FUD?
And all the other search engines? I left it when they started sucking... My search results are starting to suck with Google, since everyone is trying to 'game' it.
Statistics, with a little tweaking and creative enclosure, can be stated to mean anything. I recieved something in the mail about buying bed linens for my dorm room which stated something along the lines of "70% of students that bought linens bought a package". Read quickly, it could be interpreted to mean that 70% of students bought linens. But that's not what it meant.
When I first read the report on the 19th (Google - 36.9%, Yahoo! - 30.4%, MSN - 15.7%), I called BS. Here's my reasoning. Just before Star Wars was released, I held the number one search spot for "Star Wars Trailer" (no quotes) on ALL three mentioned search engines for a week. I got a million hits in about 2 days. 69% were Google, 14% from Yahoo and 2% from MSN.
I later moved down to 4th in Google but held my place in Y!/MSN. The scores shifted very slightly but remained in favor of Google. Unless this proves that Star Wars geeks are primarily Google users, it proves the surveys innaccurate in favor of MSN and Yahoo!.
That's my 0.02.
Movie News - "Entertainment news, bitch!"
Well if the amount of searches google is getting is going down -- you have to account for where they are going.
Lately I've become increasingly frustrated with Google's searches. Too many businesses and "magnet sites" (sites designed only to match your query and lure you to their page to then slam you with advertising and paid links, e.g. about.com) have been messing up Google's query system. It's been much more difficult to sift through the relevant pages and the junk ones, plus the number of junk pages continues to grow by the day, flooding my searches with more useless junk. And another thing that got to me yesterday (though I suppose I can't exactly blame Google for this) was seeing a quote that said "Google has blocked 1 webpage because it contains information violating the DMCA."
And yet, I've been trying to scout out other search engines to see if there's anything better, but I haven't found anything that still comes close to Google, even when there's so many people who are cheating Google's system. Altavista's too inconsistant, Dogpile seems to shovel 'piles' of pages at me that just match whatever word I've typed in, and the few times I've used Ask Jeeves, I can get simple information and answers, but any search that I need in depth will still only give me simple information and answers. Google's algoritm seems to be the only one to tell me what information's closest to what I'm trying to find, despite all the artificial relevance inflation that its engine takes.