Users Prefer Search Apps Over Search Engines

July 3, 2014

Search engines are seeing a drop in ad revenue, because instead of opening Web browser and hitting a search engine to find information, users are turning to search apps instead. TechCrunch states that in the article: “We Search More On Apps, Less On Google Now.” Google dropped from its 82.8 percent dominance of the search engine ad revenue to a mere 65.7 percent. The US mobile ad market, however, spiked to over $17.73 billion-way more than Google brought in the past two years for search.

Users are sticking to niche apps to find the information they need. It makes sense given that the aggregated results are more in tune to do what we want than having to sift through irrelevant search results. Nielson ran a consumer report that found users are spending 34 hours a month on mobile phones over 27 at their desktop. Their search wants have also shifted:

“According to the eMarketer report, we’re really big on local search. Yelp is leading the pack here in terms of ad-revenue growth. Predictions for the local business search company are at 136 percent, or $119 million in mobile ad revenue this year. While that’s a drop in the bucket compared to the spend for Google, Yahoo or Bing, it’s a telling shift in consumer behavior. Revenues are expected to triple by 2016 for Yelp. Meanwhile, Google revenue is expected to drop to 64.2 percent of the overall market by then.”

Google is not going bankrupt. The company is still making money and is still growing, it is just not dominating the entire search market. Users are getting smarter about the way they search as well as finding different ways to get their information. The old search browser might be a thing of the past soon.

Whitney Grace, July 03, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext

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