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October 2007 Search Engine Market Share

Posted by Michael Martinez on December 5, 2007 in Competitive Analysis

Every month (more-or-less) I compile a summary report for search engine market share and post it at Spider-food. I’ve now uploaded the October 2007 Search Engine Market Share report to Spider-food. Among other things, the report links back to eariler reports so that people can get a feel for how these numbers change (and change they do — I often notice that the metrics services revise their numbers for the previous month).

So what’s the difference between my report and, say, what you read at Search Engine Land? Well, I wait until all four metrics services (Compete, comScore, Hitwise, and Nielsen) have turned in their numbers and then do some basic comparisons. It’s very enlightening to see just how confused search engine metrics really are.

However, Nielsen did one very nice thing this month. They started reporting on searches-per-searcher. I think that’s a very important metric because it may indicate significant trust, a lot of frustration, intense curiosity, or something else altogether. Knowing the metric is available should encourage people to start asking questions.

My reports only go back as far as February 2007. I wish I had more data but the metrics services haven’t been very consistent about sharing data. It’s getting better, although I wish Compete would stop using graphics in their blog.

If I had time I’d probably compile some data from Quantcast and Alexa but I am getting busier and busier lately. Fortunately, Nielsen only just released their October data so I would have had to wait this long anyway.

UPDATE: I started this post with a specific intent in mind and was then interrupted.

So, in looking at Microsoft’s and Ask’s numbers, I see two different stories. Story 1: Ask is gaining market share and Microsoft MAY be gaining market share as reported by “share of searches” data. Story 2: Both Ask and Microsoft have significantly increased traffic to their sites, and their search referrals are WAY up for my own personal network. I even see an increase in Microsoft referrals for SEO Theory (whose audience are mostly loyal to Google).

Think about the long-term implications of growth in traffic at both Ask and Microsoft regardless of what “market share” data indicates.