1 Comment since March 16th, 2008
So I arrived at Search Engine Strategies New York today, and I was asked by a couple of people about search engine market shares. After pulling out the Ask numbers last week, I had all the data ready to go for the other engines. Remember, this data reflects the search referral data we’re seeing across the entire network of sites that Enquisite is tracking, so thousands of sites’ data contributed to these numbers. When I actually graphed the data, it looked quite interesting.
I had to break the data into two parts. In this first graph we see Yahoo have its customary summer spike, which generally seems to relate to the end of school. During the summer months students spend less time online, but when they go online it’s to fetch mail and the like. During this period, Yahoo! generally goes up in market share, as most students appear to use Yahoo Mail. Normally, we also see Google drop during this period.
What’s interesting is that MSN is slowly but surely gaining traction, and moving up. It’s gone from 2.9% in January 2007 to just over 5% at the end of January 2008. Still small, but almost 100% growth, and anyone in business know’s 100% growth does matter.
Meanwhile however, Yahoo’s actually losing market share, and at a greater rate than MSN’s growing.
Now take a look at what happens when we add Google to the mix.
Google’s actually over 80% of all search referral traffic we’re seeing across our network of sites. In fact, the data I’m looking at for March has Google reaching 83% of all search referrals we’re seeing. This data is culled from well over 250 million referrals in the last year.
So, is search getting more competitive? Not really. Is Microsoft buying Yahoo going to make much of a dent in Google’s lead? Nope. But (as Rand pointed out) if you look at their combined reach in the display ad business that’s a different matter.
Posted under Analytics, Ask, Enquisite Search Metrics, Google, MSN, Search Engines, Search Metrics, Yahoo, market share
No Comments since March 15th, 2008
I’m off to SES New York this evening. No, I don’t particularly enjoy red-eye flights.
On Monday at SES, I’ll be speaking on the Click Fraud and Click Auditing panel. Jeff Rohrs, Shuman Ghosemajumber, Tom Cuthbert and myself are the only carry-overs from the Click Fraud panels at SES Chicago last December. As Tom didn’t have a powerpoint last time, I look forward to him bringing forward some new data. I’ve got an entirely new presentation, with perhaps only one holdover graphic. I hope those of you who will be there will enjoy it!
Two weeks ago, Shuman and I had lunch at the Googleplex. We discussed a lot of things, and I only realize now that one thing we didn’t discuss was this panel at SES NY, other than to say “see you there.”
On Wednesday, I’m also moderating a late session on Searcher Behavior. I’m looking forward to moderating this particular session as I’ve spoken on it a few times, and the change from speaker to moderator on this topic should be interesting.
If you’re at SES New York, please do say hello, come check out the sessions, and ask lots of questions.
Posted under Analytics, Click Fraud, Enquisite Search Metrics, Google, Search Engines, Yahoo
No Comments since March 11th, 2008
I haven’t made a Search Statistics update in a while. No excuses. Just haven’t. I’m going to rectify that now, and I’ll put up some more numbers later today or tomorrow.
With all the uncertainty around Ask, and a lot of people discussing how it’s looking like it’s dropping out of the race, I thought I should should post some numbers which reflect what we’re seeing for their share of the search marketplace over the last year and a bit. We used data representing more than 250 Million search referrals since Jan 1 2007.
2007-01 2.50%
2007-02 2.99%
2007-03 1.74%
2007-04 1.68%
2007-05 1.67%
2007-06 1.26%
2007-07 1.02%
2007-08 0.94%
2007-09 1.15%
2007-10 1.23%
2007-11 1.17%
2007-12 1.19%
2008-01 1.25%
2008-02 1.03%
2008-03 0.90%
If a tree falls in the forest, does anyone hear?
Posted under Analytics, Ask, Enquisite Search Metrics, Ranking Reports, Search Engines, Search Metrics, Yahoo, market share
1 Comment since March 11th, 2008
A lot of people focus in on how to get refunds from Google or Yahoo for Click Fraud issues. Google doesn’t always call it click fraud, they often call them invalid clicks, and when they catch “invalid clicks” they pro-actively discount your bill accordingly. They don’t catch everything, but they do try hard. Yahoo! does the same thing, but less obviously. They don’t actually show you how many invalid clicks you’ve received, they just don’t appear to bill you for every click.
In both cases there are defined processes for requesting refunds or more commonly, credits.
Completing the documentation to request a refund isn’t simple, trivial, or a speedy process, (unless you have PPC Assurance where it’s a one click process). In fact, it’s quite complicated. Rather than confusing matters by outlining processes for both Google and Yahoo!, I’ll focus on Google. They’re the 800lb gorilla which everyone cares about.
In Google’s case, to file a request for credits for clickthroughs you believe you were improperly billed for, you need to identify all the original referrals, which means figuring out which entry in your log file is the original referral, and isolating the unique Google Click ID (gclid). You then need to document everything possible about that click, as in the course of an investigation, Google’s team might ask you for a lot of data. Be prepared. They are just trying to be thorough.
One issue you’ll face is how to claim what. The obvious documentation on the web deals with “Invalid Clicks” Unfortunately, invalid clicks don’t always mean the same thing to you as they do to Google. Not all invalid clicks are Click Fraud. To you an invalid click might be a referral for an incorrect keyword match. These do happen, but you’re unlikely to notice them in a large campaign, as too many terms are flying across your screen. This type of mistake actually gets handled by a different department at Google. Challenging to navigate, that’s for sure.
It’s not that Google actually sets out to make it difficult to claim back a refund, or to get a credit for mistakes. Simply put, Google’ a big organization with responsibilities for different issues assigned to different groups. They are trying to be as efficient as possible, but these efficiencies don’t necessarily make processes simpler for you, or your clients. They simply need to be thorough.
Is it worth your while to manually track down all the errors? It depends on your cost per click, and your volume. Is it worth doing so automatically? Definitely. At a cost of 1% of campaign spend, knowing what’s going on, when things go wrong, and how to deal with them is invaluable. Knowing you can recoup more than that means the ROI is pretty simple to work out.
Posted under Analytics, Click Fraud, Enquisite Search Metrics, Google, MSN, PPC Assurance, Search Engines, Yahoo
No Comments since March 10th, 2008
For the first time, the PPC Summit is coming to Vancouver B.C. later this month. It should be a great event. I’m hoping / expecting to be there, and in that expectation, the organizers of the conference have been kind enough to extend a special offer to people who want to attend. This is a bit special, as for most people the cut-off was March 7, but here, you get the access until the 12th!
I learned from David Szetela over at Clix Marketing that someone who attended one PPC Summit showed up at a second one later and recounted how his sales had gone up over $1 Million dollars, just based on the campaign management skills he’d picked up at the conference. That’s high value.
So here goes - for the PPC Summit in Vancouver, use the promo code: ENQ and save $200 off the two-day rate, plus get your 10% discount http://www.ppcsummit.com/register-vancouver.html?ENQ. Apparently, this discount code is supposed to be good for all PPC Summits to get 10% off the two-day early bird registration. If it doesn’t work, or you have any questions, call 800.507.2958 ext.703 or email registration@ppcsummit.com
Better Pay Per Click Results in 2 Days!
Dallas, Feb 4 – 5 | Boston, Mar 3 – 4 | Vancouver, Mar 31 - Apr 1
London, Apr 14 – 15 | San Francisco, May 19 – 20 | Los Angeles, Sept TBD
Posted under Enquisite Search Metrics, PPC Assurance
