Google's Share of Searches Falling? Or Increasing? 220
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."
Someone said once that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Someone said once that... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Someone said once that... (Score:2)
Re:Someone said once that... (Score:2)
Re:Someone said once that... (Score:2)
comScore monitors the web browsing habbits of people who agree to let them. Websidestory monitors websites along with browser stats etc they check referrers.
It's quite possible they are both right. Google may be getting less actual traffic than before but is passing more of the people through to other sites.
Re:Someone said once that... (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:Someone said once that... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Someone said once that... (Score:2)
Hold on a sec... (Score:5, Funny)
Statistics that don't agree? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Statistics that don't agree? (Score:2)
"88.2% of statistics are made up on the spot." - Vic Reeves
Quality, not Quantity (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Quality, not Quantity (Score:2)
Re:Quality, not Quantity (Score:2)
Perhaps because Google is less dishonest (Score:2)
With many search engines, the ads aren't so clear: What appears to be a search result is actually an ad, so the people who click on it aren't as likely to be looking for a specific product.
Re:Quality, not Quantity (Score:2)
That s
So? (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Re:So? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:So? (Score:2)
I'm Feeling Lucky (Score:1)
More often than not the exact site I was looking for is displayed almost instantly.
No problem, ask Google! (Score:2)
Re:No problem, ask Google! (Score:2)
Re:So? (Score:4, Insightful)
Another factor is what users are searching for, and why. If I wanted a quick definition or synonym, I'd use dictionary.com or thesaurus.com, respectively. If I wanted to quickly search for factual information about a particular subject, I might use wikipedia's search instead of google. If I wanted to search for movie listings, I'd use yahoo. If I wanted to search for movie information, I'd use IMDB.
So perhaps google's percentage is down. But its raw numbers might not necessarily reflect this.
Re:So? (Score:2)
Boy, that one made me laugh out loud. Wikipedia as a trusted source for "factual information"....
Max
Re:So? (Score:2)
That's what I'm wondering also... (Score:2, Interesting)
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 page
Re:That's what I'm wondering also... (Score:2)
Re:That's what I'm wondering also... (Score:2)
Compare Google's results for 'world cup 2006' [google.com] with the results from Vivisimo / Clusty [clusty.com].
Re:So? (Score:2)
Wikipedia (Score:2)
Conclusive Results? (Score:4, Interesting)
I just don't see how anyone could come to a result that's completely objective.
Re:Conclusive Results? (Score:1)
You mean Google is more popular... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:You mean Google is more popular... (Score:2)
Re:You mean Google is more popular... (Score:2)
Re:You mean Google is more popular... (Score:2)
Long, keyword heavy URLs appear to receive more traffic than short and easily remembered URLs as a result of their slightly improved search engine standing for those terms.
Search engines and bookmarks... Very few people seem to type full URIs anymore.
Follow the money (Score:3, Insightful)
If the one that says Google is increasing is sponsored by Google in any way, shape, or form, it has zero useful information content. Similarly, if the other is sponsored by any of Google's competitors, it has zero useful information content. At least, IMHO.
Simon
Re:Follow the money (Score:2)
Re:Follow the money (Score:2)
it is not a waste of money if a study returns results you need to know but do not want to hear.
Google needn't worry (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Google needn't worry (Score:2)
Re:Google needn't worry (Score:2)
Re:Google needn't worry (Score:2)
So you and your friends account for 15% of Web searches, wow, I'm impressed.
Bear Stearns using wrong metric. (Score:5, Informative)
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 [com.com].
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. (Score:3, Informative)
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.c [cornell.edu]
They're safe (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, with Google continuing to push into just about every market, customer loyalty will just keep increasing. I think that's something that Microsoft undervalues - people will continue to shop in the same store or search from the same people if the service is good and they really like the shop, even if they can get the same thing elsewhere, even marginally cheaper.
Of course, I have no statistics to back that up, but neither (apparently) do the claims of these companies - so why should I worry about it either?
Re:They're safe (Score:2)
Yeah it's complete ad-free bloated rubbish [msn.com]. I mean RSS feeds of search results? Who are they fooling..bloated rubbish.
As Mark Twain once said (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:As Mark Twain once said (Score:2)
Re:As Mark Twain once said (Score:2)
The only time I used anything other than Google was when seeing which search engine would list my personal web site (Yahoo and MSN do, Google doesn't). Aside from that, nobody else comes even remotely close to the result relevence of Google.
I think the reason my site doesn't appear on Google (even using exact naming and quotes) is because Google doesn't list sites that it hasn't encountered for a least one year
Re:As Mark Twain once said (Score:2)
Another thing to do is just push your site onto Google manually by putting into the direct scan list. It takes a little bit of digging to find it, but it is there. Do that for some other search engines as well.
As far as using oth
Obligatory Simpsons Quote (Score:5, Funny)
Lies... Damn lies... (Score:5, Informative)
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:Lies... Damn lies... (Score:2)
This is how much I trust statistics: (Score:1)
another one (Score:2, Interesting)
In other news... (Score:1)
Re:In other news... (Score:2, Insightful)
The typical user does not care about open source. They do not care about os freedom, vendor dependance, or any of the other crap everyone on slashdot blabs about. They have a computer and they want to use it.
End of story
Re:In other news... (Score:2)
The problem with that theory is that people have easy access to both, and they quickly find that MSN (and all the other search engines) suck badly compared to Google.
Google's name spreads like wildfire to even the newest computer users, and they almost can't help themselves but use Google even if their home pages are set to MSN.
Most of the world does use Google because it is vastly superior to everything that
google often doesn't work in China (Score:1, Interesting)
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!.
The almighty oracles, the research agencies. (Score:2)
What is the actual value of these companies?
For the last 10 years I've occasionally watched some figures they spit out or some predictions they've made. For the first category, these figures are based on common knowledge (ordinary public statistics) to anyone in the industry, with a twist. The take a very vague number and from that try making it exact. For example, if statistics say there were about 1 million HDTVs sold last year, 0.5 the year before and 0.25 sold the year befo
Bought FUD (Score:2, Interesting)
Are you surpriesed to begin to see sponsored
research and bought FUD?
competitors? (Score:2, Flamebait)
I'm dead serious, I've used google for 100% of my searching since a few years. I used to use Yahoo quite a bit but Google is just faster and for the most part more relevent.
Who are these people who use msn search, yahoo, altavisa, etc???
Tom
What it means (Score:2)
The announcements mean that ComScore has managed to score marketing dollars that WebSideStory hasn't (yet?). Bear Stearns promoting obviously flawed stats means they're involved, too, at one end or the other. (Did they buy the stats from CS, or did CS or its patron buy the promotion from BS?) Now we know in the future to ignore ComScore and Bear Stearns announcement
g "term in adress bar" (Score:2)
Slippery stuff (Score:3, Insightful)
How many people are using Windows 2000?
What percentage of all active computer users in the United States are on Macs?
What percentage of "non-technical" computer users have installed Linux and use it as their primary OS?
These are the sorts of questions that can be of vital importance to companies when they are trying to determine which markets they should be in, how they should orient their marketing, what improvements they need to make to their products, and so on. The problem is that this information is extremely difficult to pin down, which is why these analysts proliferate.
If it's tough to get reliable data you can base decisions on, it's even more difficult to determine whether a given market analysis is worth a damn.
Google Owns. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Google Owns. (Score:3, Informative)
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:Google Owns. (Score:2)
For Yahoo the main explanation seems to be that their search results are so old. They look very much like what Google might have given 3 years ago - including sites that are now dead or have moved. My site is younger so they largely overlook it.
MSN search probably just has very few users...
it is summertime (Score:2)
It is summertime so sales are down by 80% in some cases.......
so yes searches and traffic is down very badly
I live from online sales and work and summertime shows on my wallet
The wrong statistic... (Score:2)
Answer: 95% and increasing fast.
Google is becoming useless, as I have to use some very complicated queries to find even simple data. Rememeber the good old days when AltaVista was at 100%?
Others??? (Score:2)
Good question! Let's Google it, somebody'll know. (Score:2)
Define "search" (Score:2)
Studies like this are useless without detailed information about exactly what's being measured. For example, I'd really like any of these sources to define what they mean by "search". Searching using Google could mean the use of Google Answers [google.com], Google Directory [google.com], Google Groups [google.com], Google Images [google.com], Google Maps [google.com], Google News [google.com], Google Scholar [google.com], or..... Google Web [google.com]. This doesn't even include other services such as Gmail and desktop searches, where people mostly search their own content using Google.
A few years a
The stock price was up during trading hours... (Score:2)
Google stock (GOOG) ended the trading day up (by 6 tenths of a percent I think), but after trading sank greatly. We'll have to see how it opens tomorrow to know for sure.
Either way, it's tough to say. Even if the stock is doing well, it doesn't necessarily mean that the company as a whole is.
Personally, I'm on the fence just as much. I love the company, but I just can't believe how it's trading/valued at the corner of Wal
Re:No meaning then. (Score:4, Insightful)
Studies can't really cancel each other out. If, in the presence of both studies, neither of them count, then they were probably both wrong to begin with.
And it is possible for both to be right, if they use different methods for sampling or measurement.
Re:No meaning then. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:No meaning then. (Score:2)
Yahoo! does an amazing job when you can only remember a sentence or two from what you're looking for. An identical query in Google will often turn up nothing. If more people tried Yahoo! again, they might be pleasantly surprised.
Re:No meaning then. (Score:2)
No it isn't. One or both of them has to be wrong. What this means is that one or both of their methods are wrong, not that both are right because they used different methods.
Again, it is not possible for Google's search market share to be both 36.9% and 52% simultaneously.
Re:No meaning then. (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:No meaning then. (Score:2)
Re:google simplicity (Score:2)
Way too much crap that's wormed its way to the top of each search, but I don't know an engine without that problem.
(If you know of one, I'd be willing to try someone other than google.)
Re:google simplicity (Score:1)
Re:google simplicity (Score:2)
What's compex about the search interface?
Sure, there are tons of other things you can use Google for, but the basic search interface is not complex visually or functionally, and its features are very in line with most users' mental search models.
You don't have to look at Froogle, or Scholar, or Google news to use the plain ol' search engine.
Re:google simplicity (Score:1)
Re:google simplicity (Score:5, Informative)
Sure it is.
Google on Dec 02, 1998 [tinyurl.com]
Google on Jul 21, 2005 [google.com]
Re:google simplicity (Score:2)
Dude, you've got to be kidding. The front page is almost exactly the same as it's always been. Now, let's contrast that with Yahoo. I always liked Yahoo's sleek interface back in the 90's. Now, gah! What a mess!
Re:google simplicity (Score:2, Informative)
Re:google simplicity (Score:2)
Re:google simplicity (Score:2)
And by the way, you just adverbed (-ly) a compound adjective (ever-increasing), or compounded (ever-) and adverb (increasingly), depending on how you look at it, which strikes me as filled with mega-wrongness and generally over-clumbsified.
Re:Why settle for research companies (Score:1)
Re:Why Google ain't all that -- get over it (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why Google ain't all that -- get over it (Score:1)
1. I smell the odor of unsubstantiated BS all over your post
2. You were too high to recall your ID
Re:Why Google ain't all that -- get over it (Score:1)
Re:Why Google ain't all that -- get over it (Score:2)
Re:Why Google ain't all that -- get over it (Score:2)
Re:Why Google ain't all that -- get over it (Score:5, Insightful)
Google conceptually figured out how to let humans do what they are good and, and let computers do what they are good at and use that as to generate search results.
Yahoo at the time, had hordes of people who browsed the web literally and categorized things by hand. A completely unscalable, and insanely expensive proposition.
Alta Vista was the king of meta-tag spamming. Sure it was all automated, but it sucked to use them for searching.
Now, you also fundamentally don't understand what makes google an innovator. First off, look at Ajax and how interactive and user friendly their websites are. Take their maps for instance. They are the first (as far as I know the only people) with whom I can scroll the map using a mouse. I don't have to use preset jumps. I don't remember ever seeing anyone who let me jump to intersections and show them to me. I don't know of anyone else who provides satallite and drawn maps both as seamlessly or for free. They make online applications that work nearly as well, and are almost as flexible as desktop application.
Plus it's innovative that they turned the entire business model on it's head. They are quality. Everything they do is based on quality. (That's a lot like Apple). They refuse to compromise quality to make an easy buck. It'd be easy for them to let people purchase "bonus pagerank". They haven't, and they won't. They ensure that everything that is paid for is clearly marked that way. Unlike any other search before it.
They don't have to make any money from the people who use their software. They make all their money from people who are interested in presenting information related to the information google is presenting.
Next, at the time of it's IPO, it was speculated that Google's SA scalability and parallel programming technology was worth more then the company as an advertising company ever was. The problem with that analysis is that Google's knowledge is buried in people's head, if they left the company it that value would flee the building with it.
Finally, how many companies do you know of who encourage (require?) you to spend 20% of your time being creative to work on personal ideas that could become conceptual products.
Apple isn't an innovator in terms of the iPod or digitial music. I've been listening to MP3's on a computer since 1995, and several people I know have had portable MP3 players since late 2000, or early 2001 at least. Apple was very late to the game. They just happen to own it now. What Apple did was change the business model to one that people are happier about. Remarkably like Google has with search.
As to Oracle, I'm not sure about their history. I'm fairly confident the concept of an RDBM's was widely known prior to Oracle's existance. (Conceptually I believe they have been around since the late 1970's, I though Ellison started on it in 1982 or so). Ellison surely wasn't the innovator, I believe that honor would go to Micheal Stonebreaker (Standard researcher who was the world's leading expert on RDMS for all of thei early stages).
Kirby
You sound bitter (Score:2)
- Maps: Looks pretty, but it's just an incremental improvement over existing services. Trivial for Yahoo or anyone else to catch up.
Considering it is very new an it already makes Mapquest suck in comparison I'd say they deserve a lot of kudos. And I hardly think the interactive sattelite-map view is a "trivial" improvement. It took TWO YEARS for Mapquest to realise my house even existed. I put my street address into Google and I got an ACTUAL SATTEL
Re:eat my cock content filter stupid bullshit fuck (Score:2)
Both, in fact. It is all part of the Sith's evil plan to sow confusion to bring down the Republic.
Re:Our own (Score:2)