Beanstalk's SEO News Blog

ComScore today released their numbers for December 2007 and Google took a bit of a slide. Here's what happened in December:

• Google dropped 0.2% from 58.6% to 58.4% of the market share
• Yahoo! gained ground, up 0.5% from 22.4% to 22.9% market share
• Microsoft heald steady at 9.8%
• Time Warner gained 0.1% market share getting 4.6%
• And Ask (sorry guys) lost ground going from 4.6% to 4.3% of the search market share

Also interesting to note is that overall search volume dropped in December, down 3.9% from November (apparently people feel the need to pry themselves away from their computer and perhaps chat with offline friends over the holidays :)

You can view the full press release on the ComScore site here.

We have updated the numbers used by our free keyword activity tool to reflect these new numbers.

In other news:

Jim Hedger and I have decided that we're going to run a great series of articles and interviews for WebmasterRadio.fm starting next week. Keep watching this space for more information as the topics (great for anyone interested in SEO) are posted. We'll have great guests and great guest writers.

Labels: comscore, jim hedger, market share, webmaster radio

Today on Webmaster Radio Jim Hedger and I had the opportunity to discuss a number of topics. You can download the podcast of the show (recommended) in the next couple days from the Webmaster Radio site. It's also a good idea to visit it as there are many great shows and information for all levels of listener.

In every show Jim and I take some time to discuss the latest goings-on in the search engine world. Here's what we had for our listeners this week:

• ComScore metrics - ComScore released it's totals for the holiday season of 2007 with a 19% increase in sales over 2006 reaching over $28 billion in online sales. On boxing day the total crossed $545 million doubling boxing day sales from last year.
• Danny Sullivan Article - Jim and I discussed one of the best pieced of predictive writing I've ever seen. Danny Sullivan wrote a great piece as a time traveling reporter from 2010 discussing the breakup of Google. While I doubt it'll come true it's an awesome piece that helps give us a small glimpse and one possible future we SEO's and search marketers have in store for us.
  
• Traffic Power and Matt Marlon - Sometimes bad things happen to good people and that's always a sad day. Sometimes bad things happen to bad people and that's ... well ... karma. Matt Marlon, ex-CEO of Traffic Power (an SEO firm that got all their clients banned by Google) was arrested for ... you'll never guess ... fraud. Just like those website owners that he helped scam and get banned with Traffic Power, Matt seems to like kicking people when their down and has taken advantage of a horrible situation and (pardon my French) screwed people out of their homes during the forclosure issues. Personally I'm happy with the outcome and this time I don't think he can try to sue Aaron Wall for reporting on it. ;)
• Aaron Wall's rants - and speaking of Aaron Wall, he's been ranting over the last few days about the state of SEO. I can't do justice to his comments save-to-say ... I agree. THe lines of Walmart coming into the arena devalues the service. Fortunately (unfortunately for clients) they're sure to realize that this isn't the kind of service that can be bulk packages and whipped out at discount prices and still have some reasonable amount of quality control.
  

After a brief commercial break Jim and I came back with WeBuildPages' own Jim Boykin (who I had the pleasure of meeting at SES San Jose last year. Jim has just launched InternetMarketing Ninjas.com where he provides videos from some of the SEO greats and many free tools (if you're willing to pay the $2,995 per year for the videos). I haven't had a chance to view the videos and, as Jim notes, the service is offered more to do-it-yourselfers than SEO's so I likely won't however the names and topics covered are definitely spot-on. Maybe Jim will give me a free sneak-peek (hint hint Jim ;) and I can report on it more thoroughly.

Good luck to Jim and the ninjas !!!

And in other news:

The latest article by Beanstalk is out. I wrote and article that changed considerable from idea to finished product (meaning there's another coming out soon). The article is on finding a good SEO-friendly web designer and can be found on the Beanstalk site here.

Labels: aaron wall, comscore, danny sullivan, google, jim boykin, jim hedger, traffic power, webmaster radio

Alright, I just realized that I've been missing some press releases from comScore over the past week (caught in filter) and of course - that's when all the news comes in. Here's a summary of what the stats are saying this week:

December 13, 2007:
Between the dates of November 1 to December 11, more than $20 billion was spent online showing a whopping 19% increase over last year. eBay has coined the second Monday of December as Green Monday (it is the heaviest online spending day of the season) and this year showed retailers $881 million in love, up 33% over last year and setting the record as the heaviest online spending day in history.

December 16, 2007:
The week of the 9th to the 15th marks the heaviest spending date of the season (likely) with $4.7 billion in sales showing a 22% increase over last year.

Today (December 19, 2007):
Top 50 Websites released. Comscore's report of the top 50 website rankings is released. And here are the results:

1. Yahoo! sites: 136,180,000 uniques
2. Google sites - 131,538,000 uniques
3. Microsoft Sites - 119,194,000 uniques
4. Time Warner Network - 119,084,000 uniques
5. Fox Interactive Media - 81,325,000 uniques
6. eBay - 80,510,000 uniques
7. Amazon Sites - 59,058,000 uniques
8. Wikipedia sites - 55,157,000 uniques
9. Ask Network - 51,636,000 uniques
10. New York Times Digital - 47,997,000 uniques

And for the rest of the list you'll just have to read their press release ont he topic (there's lots of other interesting figures in there as well) at http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1974.

You can view their other press releases at http://www.comscore.com/press/pr.asp.

Labels: ask, comscore, google, microsoft, time warner, yahoo

ComScore released it's numbers for October and, oh my goodness, Google is up. In a rare turn of events the folks at Google appear to have won over some users, increasing their marketshare by 1.5%. The number now break down as follows:

• Google showed a 1.5% gain from 57% markshare in September to 58.5%
• Yahoo! realized a 0.8% loss going from 23.7% to 22.9%
• Microsoft took losses (surprise surprise) going from 10.3% to 9.7%
• Ask (YEAH !!!) held steady at 4.7%
• The Time Warner Network lost 0.1% marketshare ending at 4.2%
  

Now, that said - it's not as bad as it looks for the non-Google site. Let's look at the number of searches conducted on each engine in the month of October which, overall, were up by 11.8%:

• Google was up 14.8% with 6.151 billion searches in October over 5.356 billion searches in September
• Yahoo! realized an 8% gain in total searches ending with 2.405 billion searches (up from 2.227 billion in September)
• Microsoft showed gains in search number though more modest with a 5.6% increase in October going from 969 million searches to 1.023 billion
• Like Google, Ask's gains were in the double digits (and since I have a soft spot in my heart for Ask I'm happy to see this) jumping from 444 million searches in September to 491 million with a 10.7% gain in October
• And the Time Warner Network gained 9.4% in search numbers going from 405 million to 443 million

You can read more on the ComScore site at http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1908.

Labels: ask, comscore, google, market share, microsoft, msn, time warner, yahoo

As if the folks over in Microsoft's search division didn't have enough woes in their lives lately (and by "lately" I mean for all the years after people started using search engines) the data released by ComScore yesterday paints a bleak picture. Until yesterday they were at least able to call themselves one of the big three. It appears that they can no longer claim even that. And who is the engine that overtook them? Could Ask finally be making some moves forward? No, the "newcomer" is likely an engine most of you may not have heard of if you're from North America. The engine is Baidu.com and it's the primary search engine in China (did you think that might have been Google.cn after all the hoopla over their expansion into there and the debates over their censoring search results?)

The current marketshare for August 2007 breaks down as follows:

Search Property Searches
Worldwide 61,033,000,000
Google Sites 37,094,000,000
Yahoo! Sites 8,549,000,000
Baidu.com Inc 3,253,000,000
Microsoft Sites 2,166,000,000
NHN Corporation 2,044,000,000
eBay 1,319,000,000
Time Warner Network 1,212,000,000
Ask Network 743,000,000
Fox Interactive Media 683,000,000
Lycos, Inc. 441,000,000

Another interesting fact is that this does not include access from cyber cafes or cell phones and PDA's. The Asian market is lightyears ahead of us in their us of their portable devices as full-scale Internet devices which could further influence the results in favor of engines such as Baidu.com if they were counted.

Another good question you might want to ask is, who the heck is NHN Corporation? They're a Korean engine and they're right on the heels of Microsoft as well.

Does this reflect a dramatic shift in the engines? In my opinion, not really. We're all used to hearing the data relative to North American or US-based numbers. This is the first comprehensive study of worldwide search behavior that we have been exposed to (that I've heard of at least) and it appears that the Asian market is far more active that many of us may have assumed. In retrospect, if we had really though of it, would we have been surprised? I for one am not shocked by the data but it has reminded me that there are important markets outside of North America and Europe and it's high time we started paying closer attention to them.

To read the full take on the ComScore data you can read the ComScore press release from yesterday here.

Labels: china, comscore, google, market share, microsoft, msn, yahoo

Well it's finally happened, the fine folks over at Redmond seem to be making at least some minor gains against Google and Yahoo! After literally years of losing search market share (due in large part to an under appreciation for what search would mean in the early days) MSN is finally making gains against the search giants.

The latest ComScore results are out and they show the following for the major engines:

• Google sites dropped from 50.7% market share in May 2007 to 49.5% in June showing a drop of 1.2%
• Yahoo! sites dropped from 26.4% market share in may to 25.1% in June with an overal drop of 1.3%
• Microsoft sites rose from 10.3% to 13.2% from May to June with an overall gain of 2.9%
• The Ask network held steady at 5.0% market share
• The Time Warner Network dropped from 4.6% to 4.2% between May and June of 2007
  

Some other points from their stats:

• Americans conducted 8.0 billion searches online in June, up 6 percent versus May and up 26 percent versus June 2006.
• Google Sites led the pack with 4.0 billion search queries performed, followed by Yahoo Sites (2.0 billion), Microsoft Sites (1.1 billion), Ask Network (403 million), and Time Warner Network (341 million). Despite declining in search market share in June, both Google Sites and Yahoo! Sites enjoyed increases in search query volume.
• Microsoft Sites experienced a significant increase in search query volume (up 36 percent) and search market share (up 2.9 share points) in June, due in large part to Live Search Club, a program launched by Microsoft in late May to engage and reward users of Live Search.

We of course would once again like to extend our sincere thanks to ComScore for making this information available.

Please note that the variables used to power our free keyword activity tool have been updated to reflect the new marketshare numbers.

Labels: ask, comscore, free seo tools, google, keyword activity tool, market share, msn, time warner, yahoo

Good news came to Yahoo! and it's advertisers today in the form of a ComScore report. For those of you who read this blog regularly or, to be more accurate, any SEO blog regularly, you'll recall that back on February 5th Yahoo! launched it's new advertising system Panama. As one could expect, the changes have been monitored closely by Yahoo!

ComScore today released their finding on the changes in click through rates on Yahoo! ads. And they are:

• Week Ending 2/11/07 - 5% increase
• Week Ending 2/18/07 - 9% increase
  

Now, these number may not seem impressive, after all - they're only single digit increases however when we consider that we're dealing with over 60 million searches per day in the US alone and that this increase takes them from a 10.1% advertising click through rate to 11.1% this reflects an additional 600,000 advertiser clicks per day. this is 219,000,000 additional click per year which is going to easily translate into many MANY millions of dollars in revenue for Yahoo!

You can read ComScore's full release here.

Labels: comscore, panama, yahoo

ComScore today released their search engine market share stats for January, 2007. The major engines broke down as follows:

• Google - 47.9% (o.2% increase)
• Yahoo! - 28.1% (0.4% decrease)
• Microsoft - 10.6% (0.1% increase)
• Ask - 5.2% (0.2% decrease)
  

And that's all we've got for today. It's my birthday and so now I'm off for some fun with the kids and some nauseatingly sweet cake. :)

Labels: comscore, market share, predictions 2007 seo search engine