Search Share Drop for Google: Should You Care?

September 14, 2011

What is Google’s search engine share? I don’t think it is what the outfits reporting the league table are accurate. I have commented upon the problems of figuring out traffic many times, and I am will not retravel a well worn path, You can hit the Burger King’s of sampling, smoothing, and statistical fancy dancing yourself. The actual traffic to a Web site is often a dark mystery even to those with access to Web logs.

For an example of the recent tempest in a not so small tea pot, navigate to “Google Search Falls Below 65% as Yahoo, Bing Gain”. The news is that Bing is up and Google is down. How much? Well, the Google drop off is reported to be “64.8 percent from 65.1 percent in July [2011, according to comScore.”]

Anyone remember how confidence levels work? Nah, I don’t think that matters at many places.

But, just for fun, let’s assume that Google is losing market share. The first question I would ask is, “How is overall Web traffic behaving?” Without context, the performance of a particular service is interesting but sort of floating out there without an anchor. The next question is, “What is the relative gain on non search systems which perform finding?” There are apps that search. There are social sites like Facebook.

What will happen if the Google does lose traffic? I think that there will be some significant and tough to overlook changes in how the Google does business. One non search example is the hike in prices for the enterprise app engine. I drop in Web traffic is likely to make Panda look like a toothless lap dog.

I see some warning signs of softening in online ads. One high profile example is the Groupon fatigue. Another is the drift toward mobile search. The behavior of mobile users, according to our research, is different from desktop boat anchor searching. For now, the reports of a decline are little more than suggestive. More data are needed. When a shift changes, we won’t learn about it from the services doing the reporting. That is rear view mirror stuff. For now, I don’t care. Your mileage may vary.

Stephen E Arnold, September 14, 2011

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.