Web Search Traffic Outlook, Cloudy, Not Much Change
June 12, 2010
The Web league tables are less interesting than those for other sports. I don’t subscribe to any paid services. I learned several years ago that the companies cranking out these data often report numbers that do not match the data in some vendors’ search logs. The variance can be significant. I looked at the data in the TechCrunch write up “comScore Says Bing And Yahoo Gained Market Share In May. Or Have They?” The data suggest that Bing and Yahoo are up and Google is down. The reality is that each of these vendors is doing many different things to build traffic. The most important factoid in the write up is contained in the comment about “adjusting for the impact of user interface changes.” Add to that the smoothing that occurs when data are sampled and crunched. What’s clear is that Google’s dominant position in Web search gives it an advantage which seems to be holding up despite exogenous factors and management actions. Is the 66.4 percent market share number for Google accurate. Nope. Google’s share is north of this figure if my understanding of the situation is correct. Regardless of the number, Google’s search share like the dominance of Microsoft Word, is not likely to change dramatically in the short term. Over the longer term, there is uncertainty about Google’s footprint that did not exist in 2006 in my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, June 12, 2010
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