What percent of actual searches does Google have? Options

I have seen different (all high) numbers thrown around for the actual percent of the number of searches Google performs versus the other search engines. Does anyone have a current, accurate, referenced percent?

Thanks,

D. Scott

These figures are taken from WordTracker, (who in turn source thier data from Netfactual, but the Netfactual data is subscription only) and were current for November 2002.

Search Engine Search Share
Google 35.11%
Yahoo 32.79%
MSN 12.08%
AOL 9.01%
AltaVista 1.74%
Lycos 1.57%
Netscape 1.10%
Looksmart 0.59%
Alltheweb 0.21%
DMOZ 0.01%
TOTAL 94.21%

What is interesting is that if you add up the search share of all the engines who use google data you come up with an astounding 78%!
Now if you optimize your site for Google and MSN you have covered 90% of the searches done.

I've seen numbers suggestion that their marketshare includes from 70%-80% (this includes all the Yahoo type things)

Does anyone have a current, accurate, referenced percent?

If you want accuracy then surely you need to narrow it down to your market, if not your target demographic group.

In the UK, Google and AskJeeves are huge, equally, in terms of how many people use each, but then again, the ones who use Google are more often the experienced 'poewr-users' who search more frequently, so make more searches.

Therefore, although Google and Ask have roughly equal market share, Google has more searches by far - just not more people performing them. This is an highly important distinction to grasp.

Google generally provide almost 80% of referrals, but they are not used by 80% of all users.

In the UK, it was proven that 70% of all internet activity comes from just 20% of all UK internet users. The other 80%, and thus the vast majority, log on far less frequently, and usually for specific purposes, such as to simply check their email once or twice per day, and maybe research something specific at the weekend.

Thanks Mel.

Thanks Ammon ...

I agree accuracy is difficult to obtain. I have been viewing logs for several active sites for multiple years here in the U.S. It has been interesting to watch the numbers unfold.

Presently, over 84% (on average between the sites) of first time visitors come from Google. These are not technical sites and thus not technical people.

If I can get a client in the top five positions in Google using relevant keyword phrase(s), all other efforts become almost completely irrelevant.

I still to this day deal with the others though ... but not sure why?

But what we should be concerned about is not how many searches or searchers each engine may have in total, but what those searchers are doing with their searches.

What percentage of either category are interested in purchasing something online as opposed to those who are checking rankings, or doing research of one sort or another, or perhaps just surfing for their own pleasure?

If we had this sort of demographics, it would be far more useful, but given that they don't seem to be available, I feel that the total number of seaches is probably more relevant than the number of seachers, particularly when people use that oft quoted term "market reach" to describe how popular they are. I would rather have a base of 1000 searchers who search regularly and often than 10,000 who search once a month, but market reach says that the latter is ten times more popular.

I would rather have a base of 1000 searchers who search regularly and often than 10,000 who search once a month, but market reach says that the latter is ten times more popular.

Mel, it would depend on the site. For an e-commerce site, if those 10,000 people are searching for a particular product and find it, buy it, are happy with it, and will buy it again ... then they will not require researching 'regularly'.

I honestly do not believe that people (you know not us, the real ones!) search 'regularly and often' for specific keywords. Especially with regard to e-commerce products or content sites for that matter. Once they find what they are looking for they move on to something else.

Therefore, for my e-commerce clients … I would much rather have the 10,000. Actually, I will take 100,000 one timers ... shoot if your listed properly (meaning you have what they are looking for), you have a nice site built with reasonable prices ... you have a sell. Now if your client is smart, they keep that customer real happy and then they have repeat business and word of mouth marketing (i.e. continues growth of customers and revenue).

While there is a lot in what you say DSD, there are also regular online buyers and those who never buy online. The online buyers tend to buy more often and more than one item and in fact are probably the 20% who make 80% of all the online purchases.

Now if I could only target that 20% I would be happy to give you the remaining 80%

Deal! :wink:

There's one problem with the logic there, Mel, and that's probably because of your own business - you deal with online companies. For most people in the B2B arena especially, their target demographic are the CEOs and senior executives, the guys who are more likely to be found in a good club, on a golf course, or hanging out with friends from the old school than sitting at home surfing each night.

For the majority of businesses, the decision-makers are the ones who have real lives and don't live online. Target that 20 or 30 percent who live online and you're only reaching the college kids, secretary pool, and fellow online marketers. If that's your demographic then you're laughing, but for most, those 70% who only use the internet at all when they are deadly serious (not for fun) are the exact people they need to reach.

FYI, over 70% of the UK online population have made purchases online. By targeting just the most active 30% of all users you are certainly missing at least 60% of your market, and as explained above, quite possibly far more than that, right up to 90% in some cases.

Hi Ammon,
most of the B2B businesses I am familar with do not have the top executives doing online searches that affect their business decisions, BUT they do have staff who do the research, write the reports and make the recommendations to management.

I feel that these are a better target demographic for online businesses than the 2% or so of senior executives. They may be classed as college kids or the Steno pool, but their input regularly lands up the desk of the decision makers.

Onestat says Yahoo is moving up, Google going down...

Search engine war: Yahoo is back according to OneStat.com

http://www.pressi.com/int/release/58928.html

Kim

Makes perfect sense now that Yahoo is using Google for their main results. Before they were total junk results. Now they're good, people are using them again.

Yahoo was very smart to make Google their main results, and now it's working for them.

Wanna bet that they don't get rid of google completely even when they have their hands on Inktomi? Everyone is predicting they will dump Google. Not me. Not if they're smart.

Jill

(PRESSI.COM 01/27/2003) Amsterdam – January 27 2003 – OneStat.com ( http://www.onestat.com ), the number one provider of real-time intelligence web analytics, today reported that Yahoo is back in the search engine war. Yahoo's global usage share has risen from 20.6 percent to 22.1 percent the last 2 months. Yahoo's global usage share has not reached such an all time high since April 2002.

While the global usage share of Yahoo increased, the global usage share of Google, the most popular search engine on the web, remains stable. Google's global usage share has decreased 0.4 percent the last 2 months. Google's global usage share is 54.7 percent at the moment.

“Search engines like Yahoo and Google can drive a lot of traffic to a website. Our software is the ultimate solution to measure traffic from search engines to a website. Each website owner can analyse what kind of search engines & keywords the visitors use to find a website,” said Niels Brinkman, co-founder of OneStat.com.

The 7 largest search engines on the web are:

1. Google 54.7%
2. Yahoo 22.1%
3. MSN Search 9.5%
4. AOL Search 3.7%
5. Terra Lycos 2.8%
6. Altavista 2.5%
7. Askjeeves 1.5%

What I find interesting about the Onestat data is the methodology they are using and what they are reporting.

The figures come from data collected from sites using their stats programs and they are reporting "useage share" which needs a bit of explanation :

"Methodology: A global usage share of xx percent for search engine Y means that xx percent of the visitors of Internet users arrived at sites that are using one of OneStat.com’s services by using search engine Y."

In other words they are reporting referrals, a most useful metric, much more so than percentage of the number of searches conducted or what percentage of eyballs see a particular search engine in a given month.

Hello,

While the data is a little old, a study cited in a Search Engine Report article article from this past May found that, based on "search hours," Google was the most used engine.

Instead of solely basing rankings on user visits or referrals, this metric looks at how much time people spend using an engine.

A brief snyopsis of the study can be found in the following evolt article.
Google Gets the Most Traffic

But, using referrals from sites, there is the inherrent natural occurrence that referrals to multiple sites in the same arena are the same user from the same search browsing down through the SERPs.

Hi Ammon
I suppose that could be so, but if they land on my site as a result of a search in a particular search engine, then both the site and the search engine have done their jobs and now its up to the site to make the sale.

I gather that you feel that the number of unique users of a search engine may be more valuable. If so could you expand on that a bit?

I gather that you feel that the number of unique users of a search engine may be more valuable. If so could you expand on that a bit?

Certainly, and you are right, the key word here is more valuable, but neither is really the figure we are trying to get to. The figure that we are really hoping to ascertain, or at least estimate, is the number of potential customers, or the potential sales volume per week or month.

Neither of the statistics we're discussing can do that, but the volume of referrals across a large, random sample of sites will tell us less of use in guessing a figure than the breadth if audience reach will do.

Search referral counting really only tells us the level of interest in a particular topic, and when we take the topic out of the equation, it leaves nothing of any value at all.

Let me pick two search terms from a website. One got 2,731 referrals to the site last month, the other got 28 referrals to the site. Which one generated more sales? Without the search terms or some context, there's no way to answer that, and thus the sheer volume of referrals also means absolutely nothing without the context of terms used.

Does every search result in a purchase? I've made over 30 searches today and bought nothing. Somedays I may make hundreds of searches for research and buy nothing. Otherdays I may make 2 searches and 3 purchases. Referrals mean nothing without context.

What percentage of all searches are made with the objective of making a purchase, as opposed to general information seeking?

Does the nature of the words used in a search make a major difference to the likelihood of a sale?

Will a site that is only found in sale-related queries have greater, lesser or equivalent value to each referral when compared to a site that only shows up for general information related queries?

Referral data is only useful to anyone when they can look at the context of the referral and the associated conversion rates.

Looking at the other metric, the number of unique users each engine has, can tell you several things of immediate value:

Firstly, it tells you which engine could send you the most different/unique people as sales prospects. This matters, since hopefully once a customer has purchased from you, they'll never need to search for that item again and will return directly to you for further purchases.

Secondly, since the number of unique searchers for all engines should add up to more than the number of total searchers in the world, it shows you what percentage of users will use more than one search engine during the time-period of the study.

Thirdly, it eliminates duplication to an extent - an extent predicted by your analysis of the percentage of users that used more than one search engine. In short, you have a rough idea of the incidence of duplicates in the data.

Fourthly, although your earlier comments about the power users being more likely to purchase, these are also the ones far more likely to be idly window-shopping or looking for general info. The ones who only come online when they mean business, mean business.

Looking at my personal logs Yahoo is consistently 10-15% behind Google, what has been really strange is AOL has been dropping off in the last couple of months. Any ideas why?