Disclaimer: SEO Theory is not associated with Quantcast.com and the SEO Theory real search market share report is an estimate based on data provided by Quantcast.com for free through its Web site. Quantcast.com has not endorsed this report. These traffic estimates may not represent actual unique visitor data.
The real search market share report is measured in terms of estimated unique U.S. visitors rather than number of queries performed. Because of automated rank-checking tools (and manual rank checking), Google’s estimated search market share based on queries performed is heavily inflated and therefore an unreliable indicator of potential search traffic. A better metric would actually be number of referrals each search service makes to destinations but that data is not publicly available.
The following tables are based on Quantcast’s estimated unique U.S. visitors for the selected domains. The Algorithmic Search Market Share includes only services for which Quantcast estimates at least 1,000,000 monthly visitors (see bottom of report for why). 48 algorithmic search services were scored for inclusion in the report. For September 2008, Quantcast attributes 1,000,000 or more U.S. visitors to only 20 of the scored services.
Snap’s traffic estimates (from Compete and Quantcast) may be significantly influenced by their Snap Shots tm service for Webmasters. If that is the case, then Snap’s search traffic may be significantly lower than its widget referral traffic. Snap’s position in the search market requires further study and analysis.
The percentages for algorithmic search are calculated based on the total estimated visitors in the report. September’s percentages changed radically from August’s percentages because new search services have been added to the report. The total estimated U.S. visitors for the search services in this report amounted to 446,800,000.
Services that have the same estimated visitors are assigned the same rank.
The report is divided into three tables: Algorithmic Search, Directory Search, and Blog Search. The Algorithmic search report reflects more than 448 million combined estimated visitors. It is not possible to determine from the data Quantcast publishes how many visitors the search services share.
| August Rank |
September Rank |
Domain | August Visitors |
September Visitors |
August % | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Google.com | 136,000,000 | 135,900,000 | 34.88% | 30.00% |
| 2 | 2 | Live.com | 92,000,000 | 92,700,000 | 23.59% | 21.00% |
| 3 | 3 | Search.yahoo.com | 59,200,000 | 59,000,000 | 15.18% | 13.00% |
| 4 | 4 | Ask.com | 35,100,000 | 42,500,000 | 9.00% | 10.00% |
| 5 | 5 | Snap.com | 15,700,000 | 38,500,000 | 4.03% | 9.00% |
| - | 6 | Searchservice.myspace.comRb | - | 23,900,000 | - | 5.00% |
| 6 | 7 | Nextag.com | 14,700,000 | 11,300,000 | 3.77% | 3.00% |
| 7 | 8 | Search.msn.com | 8,700,000 | 8,600,000 | 2.23% | 2.00% |
| 8 | 9 | Search.aol.com | 8,100,000 | 8,300,000 | 2.08% | 2.00% |
| 9 | 10 | Dogpile.comMeta | 4,300,000 | 4,600,000 | 1.10% | 1.00% |
| 10 | 11 | Search.mywebsearch.com | 3,200,000 | 3,700,000 | 0.82% | 1.00% |
| - | 12 | Info.comMeta | - | 3,300,000 | - | 1.00% |
| 11 | 13 | Aboutus.org | 2,600,000 | 2,800,000 | 0.67% | 1.00% |
| 12 | 14 | Altavista.comRb | 2,100,000 | 2,100,000 | 0.54% | 1.00% |
| - | 15 | Search.pch.comMeta | - | 2,000,000 | - | 0.00% |
| 14 | 16 | Mamma.comMeta | 1,800,000 | 1,800,000 | 0.46% | 0.00% |
| - | 17 | Search.cnn.comRb | - | 1,600,00 | - | 0.00% |
| 13 | 18 | Search.comMeta | 1,900,000 | 1,500,000 | 0.49% | 0.00% |
| 15 | 18 | Alexa.com | 1,500,000 | 1,500,000 | 0.38% | 0.00% |
| - | 19 | Kanoodle.com | - | 1,200,000 | - | 0.00% |
| - | 19 | Mysearch.comMeta | - | 1,200,000 | - | 0.00% |
Algorithmic search services denoted by an Rb superscript are serving rebranded or co-branded results from one of the major search engines: Google, Live, or Yahoo!.
Algorithmic search services deboted by a Meta superscript are meta-search engines, drawing their results from 2 or more of the major search engines: Ask, Google, Live, or Yahoo! and other services including DMOZ
Google’s directory dropped off the September 2008 Directory Search Market Share report because it drew fewer than 100,000 estimated visitors. Perhaps that explains why Google stopped linking to its own directory. As that story indicates, Google also modified its Webmaster Guidelines, dropping the recommendation that people submit their sites to directories.
| August Rank |
September Rank |
Domain | August Visitors |
September Visitors |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Business.com | 6,300,000 | 7,500,000 |
| 2 | 2 | Dir.yahoo.com | 2,600,00 | 2,900,000 |
| 3 | 3 | DMOZ.org | 2,000,000 | 1,900,000 |
| 4 | 4 | Chiff.com | 696,300 | 674,800 |
| 5 | 5 | Joeant.com | 485,200 | 510,000 |
| 7 | 6 | Ezilon.com | 136,400 | 154,600 |
Three of the five top blog search services realized significant growth from August to September, but two services lost estimated traffic. Overall, there was growth in the use of blog indexing services.
| August Rank |
September Rank |
Domain | August Visitors |
September Visitors |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Technorati.com | 3,200,000 | 3,500,000 |
| 2 | 2 | Feedburner.com | 1,800,000 | 2,100,000 |
| 3 | 3 | Blogcatalog.com | 719,100 | 577,700 |
| 4 | 4 | Blogsearch.google.com | 435,500 | 542,400 |
| 5 | 5 | Bloglines.com | 281,300 | 201,700 |
Comparing the Compete-based report to the Quantcast-based report
Compete’s data differs from the data that Quantcast reports. Hence, the rankings by Quantcast differ from the rankings by Compete.
Why the report’s benchmark was changed
Since starting this report in July, I have been seeking references to active search engines in the hope of creating a benchmark list that documents the most actively visited search destinations in the U.S. search market. This month I decided to check my personal server logs for references to clear and obvious search referral sources. I found more than 50, but Quantcast either lacked data or estimated extremely low traffic for many of them (including a Hilary Duff search engine, an apparently new service called AskPeter.info, and several foreign-language search engines).
I still managed to document 48 search services that Quantcast estimated at least 100,000 monthly visitors for, but the list is too large for me to maintain on a part-time basis. I don’t have the resources to automate this process at this time, so I decided to limit the list to search services that receive an estimated 1,000,000+ U.S. visitors.
I may remove Nextag (a shopping search service) and Snap from the list because of their specializations. I have not yet made up my mind about them.
Hakia, for what it is worth, did not even make it into the top 48 services (their Compete traffic estimate also dropped precipitously). It appears that Hakia is in a traffic crisis, receiving fewer than 50,000 estimated visitors per month. NOTE: Be advised that the numbers reported by Alexa, Compete, and Quantcast may be wrong by wide margins.
The combined estimated visitors for the 48 services with more than 100,000 estimated visitors was 457,641,700.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Joshua Sciarrino - Refuge Design 03.04.09 at 10:26 pm
I’m not sure what’s going on but the 1st table is difficult to see. It’s extended into your navigation links.
I’m using Safari on Mac.
I found this, as I was talking to Ruud about your perspective on Search Market.
Michael Martinez 03.05.09 at 10:00 am
Sorry about that. There’s a technical glitch with this article that we haven’t had the time to fix.
You must log in to post a comment.