Capt. Obvious says “Google still rising in market share”, July 2008
In May, Google was at 68% of market share. In July they were at 70%. I’m becoming increasingly concerned that all the eggs are in one basket from both a user perspective and a marketer perspective. Google hasn’t done anything yet to warrant alarms, so maybe I’m just over analyzing things (unless you want to talk to me about their “Google Suggest” feature barf). It just seems like that green part is getting awfully big.
Google Market Share - July 2008
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I tend to agree with you here and I think Google will continue to increase it’s piece of the pie. It has been my experience over the years that if you rank well with Google the other search engines follow along fairly close.
Jeff, I’m curious to know why you rely on Hitwise and not Comscore or Nielsen Online, both of which peg Google in the low 60s (not that this obviates your argument). Comnscore showed Google with a 61.9% share at the end of July, up four tenths of a point from June. Nielsen Online pegged Google at 60.2%, a 16% YOY increase.
Hey Gary,
Thanks for the comment. Actually, I’m skeptical of any third party metrics, but until the market can really come up with a solid way of measuring things objectively via an unbiased third party, I think either ComScore or Neilsen or Hitwise all work. I’m sure some of my friends at eMarketer would tend to disagree, so I welcome their input.
At the end of the day, none of them is entirely accurate as they don’t get actual data directly from the websites they report on and instead rely on traffic taken from other sources and then extrapolated to fit a model.
I know you’ve attended a summit recently that touted ComScore as the end all be all, but I think for now, we have to use all of these as a roadmap instead of an exact metric. Let me know what you think,
Jeff
Sure, let’s talk about “Google Suggest.” What is it exactly that irks you?
Hey Michael,
The problem I have with it is that I know what I’m searching for and I don’t need Google to tell me what I should or should not be searching for. From a user experience, it will eventually force users to change their search behavior to keywords tailored around “what others have searched for”. So in essence, Google is channeling people into funnels that they can then monetize. I fully understand the business sense in doing this, but it feels to me as if Google is going against some of their core values of simplicity, ease of use, and to a limited extent, doing no evil.
Anyone else?
Jeff