June 2008 Real Search Market Share per Compete

Disclaimer: SEO Theory is not associated with Compete.com and the SEO Theory real search market share report is an estimate based on data provided by Compete.com for free through its Web site. Compete.com has not endorsed this report. These traffic estimates may not represent actual unique visitor data.

When I reported the June 2008 REAL Search Market Share per Quantcast I intended to say that I would follow up with data from Compete. Although I don’t like the way Compete bundles all traffic into the root domain, you can still get some interesting comparative information from their data.

Although Compete’s data differs from Quantcast’s data, I’m going to follow the list I created from Quantcast data (as closely as possible) for now. That may not be fair to some search services but I need to be consistent. Listings marked with an asterisk ( * ) are root domains where in the Quantcast data I was able to use search-specific sub-domains.

June 2008 Algorithmic Search Market Share by Visitors
1. Google.com	135,834,459
2. Yahoo.com*	132,881,991
3. Live.com	80,473,387
4. Msn.com*	77,740,815
5. Aol.com*	55,476,781
6. Nextag.com	39,788,271
7. Ask.com	27,134,880
8. Mywebsearch.com*	9,643,749
9. Dogpile.com	4,180,188
10. Snap.com	3,868,965
11. Search.com	1,604,524
12. Altavista.com	1,343,558
13. Aboutus.org	1,245,160
14. Alexa.com	868,739
15. A9.com	792,219
16. Hakia.com	435,131
17. Clusty.com	121,891
18. Ixquick.com	100,106

For Directory search I have removed Google and Yahoo!, since their directories are both sub-domains now and they receive relatively little traffic. If Compete ever starts reporting on sub-domains I’ll be glad to include Google and Yahoo!’s directories (assuming I’m still compiling these statistics).

June 2008 Directory Search Market Share by Visitors
1. Business.com	4,720,149
2. DMOZ.org	1,358,926
3. chiff.com	627,154
4. joeant.com	264,487
5. ezilon.com	101,037

For Blog Search I have again pruned Google from the list because its Blogsearch is hosted on a sub-domain.

June 2008 Blog Search Market Share by Visitors
1. Feedburner.com	3,504,740
2. Technorati.com	2,415,023
3. Blogcatalog.com	765,307
4. Bloglines.com	521,472

One might ask why the data differs so much between Quantcast and Compete. I suspect they buy data from different ISPs. Or perhaps they buy different data samples from the same ISPs. But Quantcast also captures data through its Web analytics code that sites can embed, whereas Compete supplements its data through toolbar statistics. I’m not aware of other data capture methods they use at this time, but the more variation in their sources the more likely their data is to look different.

Something you can do with Compete’s data is look at the Visitors through four breakdowns: People Counts (total number of unique visitors), Rank (based on internal criteria), Reach (an estimate of what percentage of the Internet population can visit the site), and unique visits. The numbers I used above are the default People Counts that Compete offers when you first perform a query.

Compete also offers several options under Engagement: Daily Attention, Monthly Attention, Average Stay, Page Views, Pages per Visit, and Visits per Person.

Unfortunately, whereas Quantcast provides you with static site analytics reports, Compete provides you with interactive reports. Quantcast is more focused on demographics and Compete is more focused on performance. Both sites provide useful estimates of information but it is not easy to make comparative analyses with their combined data.

Nonetheless, what I hope people take away from these reports is a sense that Microsoft has truly made substantial gains in the search market. Why the major metrics companies won’t show you this kind of data is beyond me. The decision to measure search market share in number of queries performed makes absolutely no sense.

I know that I tend to run more ranking queries on Google than other search engines because, frankly, my customers care more about Google. Part of that concern is driven by the media’s reliance upon the flawed search metrics reports that Compete, comScore, Hitwise, and Nielsen publish. As a search optimizer you cannot afford to depend upon such limited and flawed data. Instead you need to do your own research and be aware of where the traffic really is flowing.

Microsoft’s recent loss of advertising revenue may represent an opportunity for some PPC campaign managers to obtain lower-cost traffic. Knowing that fewer advertising dollars are being spent on a search engine whose visitor counts are skyrocketing empowers you.

Also, if you feel compelled to obtain directory listings, you definitely want to get the most bang for your buck by focusing on directories that actually have traffic and make referrals. That isn’t to say you should not take a chance on an occasional new directory as you may be able to help a good resource grow. But I would not submit a listing to 1500 directories — they just don’t get that much traffic.