October 2008 Real Search Market Share per Quantcast

by Michael Martinez on December 1, 2008

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.

Updated: December 2, 2008
Ruud Sphunn this post and Danny Sullivan questions the value of the metric presented here, saying: “Unique visitors is not a good measure. In fact, that’s sort of what we used to have before we had number of searches. The problem is that a particular visitor to a site might do more than one search.” (He says more)

I agree that this is not a “good” measure, although it’s a BETTER measure for reasons that Ruud provides in his followup. Whether a particular visitor might go to more than one site through a search engine really isn’t relevant to the discussion. With 220,000,000 Americans on the Internet in mid-2008, Google’s publicly estimated 135,000,000 visitors do not make up the 3/4 of the search market that query-based metrics would have us believe.

Danny also wrote: “I can’t even see that ISP data would be that skewed.”

Understandable, except that most people don’t use ranking software that runs off remote servers. They check their rankings from home, from work, from Internet cafes and wireless connection points — passing right through those ISP servers that log their queries.

But let me point out what I have included in each of these monthly reports: A better metric would actually be number of referrals each search service makes to destinations but that data is not publicly available. THAT is data I would love to see.

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 or sub-domains. The Algorithmic Search Market Share includes only services for which Quantcast estimates at least 1,000,000 monthly visitors. 48 algorithmic search services were scored for inclusion in the report. For October 2008, Quantcast attributes 1,000,000 or more U.S. visitors to only 19 of the scored services. There were 20 such services in September 2008.

Snap’s traffic estimates (from Compete and Quantcast) may be significantly influenced by their Snap Shotstm 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. The total estimated U.S. visitors for the search services in this report amounted to 464,300,000. September’s total was 444,800,000.

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. September is provided in parentheses for comparison.

October 2008 Algorithmic Search Market Share by Visitors per Quantcast (data provided in 000`s, rounded down)

  1. Google.com (1) 134,700 (135,900) 29.00% (31.00%)
  2. Live.com (2) 90,300 (92,700) 19.00% (21.00%)
  3. Search.yahoo.com (3) 59,200 (59,000) 13.00% (13.00%)
  4. Ask.com (4) 39,200 (42,500) 8.00% (10.00%)
  5. Snap.com (5) 33,100 (38,500) 7.00% (9.00%)
  6. Nextag.com (7) 43,400 (11,300) 9.00% (3.00%)
  7. Searchservice.myspace.comRb (6) 23,000 (23,900) 5.00% (5.00%)
  8. Search.aol.com (9) 8,200 (8,300) 2.00% (2.00%)
  9. Search.msn.com (8) 8,000 (8,600) 2.00% (2.00%)
  10. Dogpile.comMeta (10) 4,800 (4,600) 1.00% (1.00%)
  11. Search.mywebsearch.com (11) 4,300 (3,700) 1.00% (1.00%)
  12. Info.comMeta (12) 3,900 (3,300) 1.00% (1.00%)
  13. Aboutus.org (13) 2,900 (2,800) 1.00% (1.00%)
  14. Altavista.comRb (14) 2,000 (2,100) 0.00% (0.00%)
  15. Mamma.comMeta (16) 1,700 (1,800) 0.00% (0.00%)
  16. Search.cnn.comRb (17) 1,700 (1,600) 0.00% (0.00%)
  17. Alexa.com (18) 1,500 (1,500) 0.00% (0.00%)
  18. Search.com (18) 1,300 (1,500) 0.00% (0.00%)
  19. MySearch.comMeta (20) 1,100 (1,200) 0.00% (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 denoted 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

October 2008 Directory Search Market Share by Visitors per Quantcast (data provided in 000`s, rounded down)

  1. Business.com (1) 7,900 (7,500)
  2. Dir.yahoo.com (2) 3,300 (2,900)
  3. DMOZ.org (3) 1,900 (1,900)
  4. Chiff.com (4) 772 (674)
  5. Joeant.com (5) 509 (510)
  6. Ezilon.com (6) 155 (154)

Three of the five top blog search services realized significant growth from September to October, but two services lost estimated traffic. Overall, there was growth in the use of blog indexing services.

October 2008 Blog Search Market Share by Visitors per Quantcast (data provided in 000`s, rounded down)

  1. Technorati.com 3,100 (3,500)
  2. Feedburner.com  2,000 (2,100)
  3. Blogcatalog.com 1,800 (577)
  4. Blogsearch.google.com 472 (542)
  5. Bloglines.com 158 (201)

Bloglines continues to lose market share. Blogcatalog experienced strong estimated growth in the month of October.

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