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Top Search Providers for August 2009 By Jack Marshall, ClickZ, Sep 15, 2009 Microsoft's Bing grew its number of queries from U.S. users by over 22 percent month-on-month during August, making it the fastest growing major search provider, according to data from Nielsen. The engine, which was re-launched in June, now accounts for 10.7 percent of all U.S. searches. Market leader Google managed growth of 2.6 percent in comparison, behind an overall average of 2.9 percent for the sector, but continues its dominance with 65 percent of searches. Yahoo, meanwhile, saw its volume of searches drop by 4.2 percent, but continues to hold second place in terms of overall share with 16 percent. Rounding out the top four, AOL experienced growth of 2.9 percent, accounting for 3.1 percent of total searches.

The vast majority of these views are served by Youtube, which ranked No. 5 in the top 10 web brands for April 2009 (behind Google, Yahoo, MSN/Windows Live and Microsoft).

Google, which enjoyed 78.48% of June search share compared to Yahoo's 11.04%.

Enquisite Search Marketing Shares: Google Sends Most Traffic Dec 19, 2006 at 10:58am ET by Danny Sullivan Enquisite is a search ranking tool that works in part by gathering in your traffic details. That means they take in data from a variety of web sites and so can see general traffic patterns. They’ve just posted search referral data for November and part of December, putting Google far above anyone else in terms of sending search related traffic (about 78 percent). Yahoo follows in the 6-7 percent range, then MSN in the 3-4 percent range. Data is based on 10 million referrals in the period. Number of sites involved isn’t said.

TEXT SIZE Advertisement <SCRIPT language='JavaScript1.1' SRC="http://ad.doubleclick.net/adj/N5621.websitemagazine.com/B3286961.2;abr=!ie;sz=300x250;ord=[unique-string]?"> </SCRIPT> <NOSCRIPT> <a target='_blank' HREF="http://ads.websiteservices.com/adclick.php?bannerid=244&zoneid=14&source=&dest=http%3A%2F%2Fad.doubleclick.net%2Fjump%2FN5621.websitemagazine.com%2FB3286961.2%3Babr%3D%21ie4%3Babr%3D%21ie5%3Bsz%3D300x250%3Bord%3D%5Bunique-string%5D%3F&ismap="> <IMG SRC="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/N5621.websitemagazine.com/B3286961.2;abr=!ie4;abr=!ie5;sz=300x250;ord=[unique-string]?" BORDER=0 WIDTH=300 HEIGHT=250 ALT="Click Here"></A> </NOSCRIPT> Advertisement Paid Search Beats SEO Conversion Rates? ShareThis In a statement that will surely have SEO's up in virtual arms, WebSideStory, a provider of digital marketing and analytics solutions, today announced the results of a  study that shows paid search has a nine percent edge in conversion rates over organic search. I can hear the furious typing of a million outraged SEO bloggers at this very minute. Via the news release, "In a study of leading business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce sites during the first eight months of this year, paid search -- keywords bought on a pay-per-click basis at search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN -- had a median order conversion rate of 3.40 percent at business-to-consumer e-commerce sites using the company's award-winning HBX Analytics technology. This compared to a conversion rate of 3.13 percent for organic search results, defined as non-paid or natural search engine listings, during the same January-to-August timeframe, according to the WebSideStory Index, a compilation of e-commerce, site search and global Internet user trends. The study analyzed more than 57 million search engine visits. Order conversions occurred during the same session. "For both paid and organic search, you have highly qualified traffic that converts far above the overall conversion rate of about 2 percent for most e-commerce sites," said Ali Behnam, Senior Digital Marketing Consultant for WebSideStory. "In the case of paid search, marketers have better control over the environment, including the message, the landing page and the ability to eliminate low-converting keywords."

Paid (PPC) Search versus SEO August 9, 2007 ::: Increasingly I read and hear about people in the Internet marketing business arguing over whether paid search (pay per click ads) is more valuable than organic SEO, and vice versa. While there are some fascinating and relevant arguments on either side, research shows that marketers are quite satisfied with both.   A report from the SEMPO State of the Market Survey from about 18 months ago shows that 83% of respondents were using PPC compared to only 11% using SEO. Other reports show that the value of SEO is rising as user sophistication increases (according to Chris Boggs in the Spring 2007 edition of Search Marketing Standard). Marketing Sherpa's 2005 report showed SEO conversion rates overtook PPC rates at 4.2% versus 3.6%. That's quite the opposite of what had been found the year before.   The Direct Marketing Association reported in 2005 on a list of "online marketing strategies that produce the best ROI that PPC and SEO were rated equally according to US retailers, behind only "having a website" and "using email marketing". A more recent study by Marketing Sherpa, though, showed SEO ahead of email marketing, with PPC a close third.   One thing seems to be true: if a given web site shows up in both the organic search engine listings and the PPC ads, that seems to super-validate it as a good choice, which increases the likelihood of a searcher clicking on one of those listings.

Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Hopkins - North America Analyst Weblog  « Retailers Turn to Social Media in Face of Downturn | Paid Search Traffic Share Down 26% May 13, 2009 Hitwise data indicate that the share of search traffic coming from paid listings is decreasing at the expense of organic traffic. In the four weeks to May 9, 2009, 7.25% of search engine traffic to All Categories of websites was from paid clicks. This compares to 9.84% in the same four week period in 2008 - representing a 26% decline in the share of paid clicks. This trend is apparent across 16 of the 17 Hitwise parent categories (i.e. Automotive, Food and Beverage, Health and Medical, etc). The only category that didn't see a decline in paid traffic was Education, which received 1.45% of search visits from paid clicks compared to 1.39% last year. The following chart shows the share of search traffic coming from paid clicks over the past year to All Categories, Retail 500 (a custom category of 500 leading retailers), Insurance and Travel Agencies. The share of paid clicks to Insurance websites was down 22% for the year, Retail 500 down 20% and Travel Agencies down 25%. The steady and consistent decline across categories indicates that this is not an isolated or seasonal variance.

Internet tracker Hitwise claims that "the share of search traffic to Web sites generated from paid listings has dropped to about 7.25% over the last four weeks, down from 9.8% during the same period a year ago. And Hitwise noted that paid clicks from searches for brand name terms--such as Home Depot ( HD - news - people ) and Orbitz ( OWW - news - people )--saw especially sharp drops."