Thursday, April 17, 2008

Searching for meaning

comScore has posted search engine market share data for the five major engines.

Google leads with 59%+ of all searches. Importantly, too, is that the total volume of searches continues to increase. So, even though % of searches shows MS and Yahoo declining, their total searches remain flat to slightly up overall (in the last 12 months).

Nifty trend chart:


Interestingly, looking at several sites that we provide analytics reporting on shows a somewhat more nuanced (i.e., relevant) set of results:

1. Search represents slightly less than 50% of traffic sourcing

2. Google represents about 40% of all traffic with Yahoo and MSN at 5% and 1% respectively.

3. Direct traffic represents ~35% of traffic and referrals from other sites ~20%

Depending on your site's objectives, search may be the first stage in engaging your audience, but referrals (from other sites) may represent an important source of relevant traffic. Bottom line, online the data enables us to know where the audience comes from, what they do and how to build on success.


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