Ask and Yahoo Allegedly Gain Share
April 11, 2010
I delight in the league tables for the Web search championship. The data are made particularly compelling because little information about methodology, margin of error, and numerical recipes are provided. Anything goes for the azure chip crowd. Consider “Yahoo Searches Gain 3% of Market Share.” I am not sure what a “search” is nor am I able to explain “market” but never mind.
Yahoo grew, according to Hitwise, one of the PR centric online analytics companies. But even more surprising to me was the factoid that Ask.com grew by 21 percent, from 2.84% of the “market” to 3.44%”. The losers were Google and Microsoft Bing.
Several thoughts:
- With Ask.com on an apparent roll, why don’t I use the service? The results don’t allow me to do my work more quickly or easily. Ask.com strikes me as a service that may be helpful to a small number of folks looking for information but I think these folks are a distinct and interesting segment of the market. Ask.com I have learned by listening at parties where school teachers are in the mix is a hit with the middle school crowd. Some teachers find the results either “safe” or “more understandable” to this age group. I need more data, of course.
- What are Google and Microsoft Bing doing wrong? Once this question is considered, the answer is, “Not much that is within their control?” Both companies are on a marketing and PR blitz. Both companies are working overtime to improve their search offerings. Both companies are high profile brands. Maybe there is a “fatigue” factor? Maybe the Hitwise data need that “margin of error” thing that bedevils some first year statistics students in colleague?
- What are Ask and Yahoo doing right? I don’t have Ask on my radar because once the company became the search engine of NASCAR I dismissed it. Yahoo is retrenching and doing lots of MBA tricks to revivify an aging, unexciting brand. I don’t think Ask or Yahoo has made a substantive change that caught my attention, but I may be guilty of inattention.
- Is Ask getting some link love from IAC Web properties CollegeHumor.com, Reference.com, Vimeo.com, Chemistry.com, TheDailyBeast.com, InsiderPages.com, and other IAC sites? Backlinks are often helpful in making those traffic stats perk up.
To sum up, Web search is no longer the main event. The users who matter are shifting to services like Facebook to find information. Another segment of users who matter are going the mobile route. Despite the fancy mapping methods, once a person has a mobile device, the search experience becomes different from what one can do sitting at a notebook with a fast, stable network connection.
My thought is that these league tables are becoming less relevant to what I am tracking. Your mileage may vary but the era of the text search is ending. The winner of a somewhat unexciting way to get information has as much importance to me as the name of the gladiator scratched on the wall at Pompeii.
Stephen E Arnold, April 11, 2010
A freebie.
Comments
4 Responses to “Ask and Yahoo Allegedly Gain Share”
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
I find that very interesting that google and Bind lost to Ask in this. Intersting article.
I really think it might be the best idea for all of the other search engines to try and just create a big partnership so that they can somehow compete against Google. That is at least the thought that I have on it.
I think that this is great that ask and yahoo are getting better with their market shares. I know that Google is great and everything, but i dont want them to destroy all of the other search engines, that really would be a shame to see all of them go.
Isn’t ask.com done now?