Real November 2008 Search Market Share Per Quantcast

by Michael Martinez on December 29, 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.

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 (and many of these queries are included in the ISP click data that is used in query-based search market share calculations). 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 November 2008, Quantcast attributes 1,000,000 or more U.S. visitors to 22 of the scored services. There were 19 such services in October 2008.

Snap’s traffic estimates 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 454,700,000. October’s total was 464,300,000.

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. It is not possible to determine from the data Quantcast publishes how many visitors the search services share. October data is provided in parentheses for comparison.

Business.com has been moved to the Algorithmic Search table because it is returning general Web results in addition to its business listings.

Microsoft’s combined estimated search visitors equal 100 million. November is the first month they have achieved that much traffic, to the best of my knowledge.

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

  1. Google.com (1) 136,600 (134,700) 30.00% (29.00%)
  2. Live.com (2) 91,600 (90,300) 20.00% (19.00%)
  3. Search.yahoo.com (3) 59,300 (59,200) 13.00% (13.00)
  4. Nextag.com (6) 43,100 (43,400) 9.00% (9.00%)
  5. Ask.com (4) 38,700 (39,200) 9.00% (8.00%)
  6. Searchservice.myspace.comRb (7) 23,300 (23,000) 5.00% (5.00%)
  7. Search.aol.com (8) 10,800 (8,200) 2.00% (2.00%)
  8. Snap.com (5) 9,500 (33,100) 2.00% (7.00%)
  9. Search.msn.com (9) 8,400 (8,000) 2.00% (2.00%)
  10. Business.com (-) 7,400 (-) 2.00% (-)
  11. Info.comMeta (12) 4,300 (3,900)1.00% (1.00%)
  12. Dogpile.comMeta (10) 4,100 (4,800) 1.00% (1.00%)
  13. Search.netzero.com (-) 2,800 (-) 1.00% (-)
  14. Aboutus.org (13) 2,300 (2,900)&nnsp;1.00% (1.00%)
  15. Altavista.comRb (14)&nsbp;2,100 (2,000) 0.00% (0.00%)
  16. Mamma.comMeta (15) 2,000 (1,700) 0.00% (0.00%)
  17. Alexa.com (16) 1,800 (1,500) 0.00% (0.00%)
  18. Search.cnn.comRb (15) 1,700 (1,700) 0.00% (0.00%)
  19. Webcrawler.comMeta (-) 1,600 (-) 0.00% (0)
  20. Search.com (17) 1,400 (1,300) 0.00% (0.00%)
  21. MySearch.comMeta (18) 1,000 (1,100) 0.00% (0.00%)
  22. Search.pch.comMeta (-) 1,000 (-) 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 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

Several Web directories that had not made the 100,000 minimum visitor count earlier this year have been included this month.

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

  1. Dir.yahoo.com (2) 3,400 (3,300)
  2. DMOZ.org (3) 1,800 (1,900)
  3. Chiff.com (4) 606 (772)
  4. Joeant.com (5) 457 (509)
  5. Ezilon.com (6) 167 (155)
  6. BOTW.com (-) 138 (-)

IceRocket joins the Blog Search list. The minimum requirement for inclusion is an estimated 100,000 monthly visitors.

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

  1. Technorati.com (1) 4,087 (3,100)
  2. Feedburner.com (2) 1,900 (2,000)
  3. Blogcatalog.com (3) 1,800 (1,800)
  4. Blogsearch.google.com (4) 442 (472)
  5. Icerocket.com (-) 160 (-)
  6. Bloglines.com (5) 158 (158)

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