German search traffic: real life figures

Search engine traffic

[heini]

So lets look at our logs and break it down:
Where does traffic to german sites come from:

Me:
Google.de >55-65%
Google.com 5%
T-Online 5% (Fast)
MSN 5%
Yahoo.de 5% (Google)
Lycos.de <5% (Fast)
AOL.de <5% (Google)
Web.de <5% (Google)
Metager (Meta engine) <5%
Rest is in the <1% range.

That is disregarding PPC. Looking across several sites, all fairly well propagated, some e-com, some purely info sites.

How are your average numbers?

[HuhuFruFru]

my austrian site (february 2003):

Google 87.3 %
Yahoo 4 %
Lycos 2.1 %
T-Online 1.7 %
Google (Images) 1.4 %
MSN 0.7 %
Web.de 0.6 %
DMOZ 0.4 %
Fireball 0.3 %
AllTheWeb 0.2 %
Other search engines 0.2 %
Netscape 0.1 %
AltaVista 0.1 %
AOL 0 %
Tiscali 0 %
InfoSpace 0 %
RedBox.cz 0 %
Dogpile 0 %
Excite 0 %

[Rumbas]

Niche site, 3 months scale, %:

google.de -- 82.05
msn.de -- 7.17
yahoo.de -- 4.70
google.com -- 2.93
freenet.de -- 1.63
lycos.de -- 1.41
aol.de -- 1.13
web.de -- 1.10
av.de -- 0.80

Google country.

[heini]

You have Adwords included? Mine is without any PPC.
Google 87%... whew.

[HuhuFruFru]

no it's without PPC.

i think the reason for the 87% is that many users click on the cached version of my site at google, and since i have a lot of small < 1 kilobyte GIFS on my site the percentage of google traffic is so high (when people click on the cached version then it requests every non-html part of a site).

i guess it is somewhere between 82-85%

[louponne]

Wow, google's numbers are incredible then in Germany! Does this mean that for ppc, google adwords is the only one worth investing in?

[stever]

Dual language (and multi-country interest) sites in Austria last month:

google.com 39%
google.de 22%
google.at 12%
yahoo.com 6%
google.co.uk 5%
msn.com 3%
yahoo.de 3%

Other language Googles, AV, Lycos, AOL, ASK all at 1% or under. Non-mainstream showings by cu2.nl(no idea) and virgilio.it(Google).

[vitaplease]

Huhufrufru,

think the reason for the 87% is that many users click on the cached version of my site at google, and since i have a lot of small < 1 kilobyte GIFS on my site the percentage of google traffic is so high (when people click on the cached version then it requests every non-html part of a site).

thats interesting, would that also explain why - with webtrends - I often see 20 hits for a "cached keyword/phrase" search in my most popular search phrases referrals?

[webmasterworld.com...]

[Fiete]

Very interesting figures!

Rumbas:
Is this what your figures are saying: You have neither T-Online nor Fast in your logs?

[andreasfriedrich]

Online version of a book on a certain OS ;)

google.de: 73.72% 
google___: 10.57% 
google.ch: _3.88% 
google.at: _3.21% 
yahoo____: _0.96% 
msn______: _0.91% 
rrzn_____: _0.76% 
lycos____: _0.59% 
t-online_: _0.41% 
aol______: _0.04%

This amounts to google___: 91.38%.

Quite amazing and scary. The ranking in other SEs than Google is good as well.

Andreas

[HuhuFruFru]

yes vitalplease, that's the reason.
you can see it in your logfiles when google requests those images from your site when someone clicks the cached-link.

the more images, css-files etc you have on a page, the more "clicks" you will see on your loganalyzer, when someone clicks on the cached-link.

[hakre]

some more stats:

by engine:

google_____60.06% (+1.83 for images) 
de-lang____49.41% (+1.07% for images) 
rest_______10.65% (+0.76% for images) 
yahoo_______5,64% 
de-lang_____3.11% 
rest________2.53% 
aol.de______0.95% 
msn.com_____0.55% 

by language:

de-lang____53.47% 
rest_______13.73% 

[heini]

Hakre, where's the rest of your traffic coming from?

[Rumbas]

Fiete, sure I have them in my logs, but they're hiding really really well. Somewhere between 0.5-0.8% Actually T-online never really did it for me (rankings fine, but I guess the kind of people looking for that particular type of product just don't use T-online).

Think Heini told us sometime that there's a oddity between T-onlines huge reach and their really small search referral rate?

Welcome to WebmasterWorld BTW! :)

[heini]

>T-Online
Just try their search - no, wait: go to their ridiculously overburdend start page, and search for the search. Then try that search...it's really the worst example of a search facility I have ever come across on any major site.
It's the absolute antipode to what search should be like for people to use it.
That said, it's still the undisputed #1 site in Germany, as far as PIs, uniques etc goes.
Anyhow, I certainly get somewhere between 1-5 or more percent of SE referrals from T-online, given the rankings are there.

[hakre]

isn't t-online just the '#1 site' because they count every dialup of any t-online user as one visit of their page?

Hakre, where's the rest of your traffic coming from?

i've made no localisation of the other traffic. mainly other websites from germany and all over the world (isn't specific isn't it ;) ...) ahh it's late.

[hyperion]

ok, here are my numbers, medium sized german company (automation/manufacturing), website is german and english, but german makes for about 3/4 of hits and referrals:

google.de_____: 46.2% 
google.com____: 27.7% 
google.at+ch__: 8.3% 
other google__: 5.9% 
yahoo.com_____: 6.0% 
yahoo.de______: 1.7% 
msn.de________: 1.4% 
msn.com_______: 3.9% 
t-online______: 1.0% 
lycos.de+com__: 1.8% 
alltheweb_____: 0.5% 
web.de________: 0.9% 
altavista_____: 0.7% 

Thats:
94.1% for all google powered sites (yahoo.com is google, too, we're only in the german dir, which I did not count for google, though I think most of this 1.7% are from them, too)
3.3% for fast
3.3% for the rest

The site shows on first or second page for the german keywords/phrases they target in google, from first to fifth page in fast, and from fourth to somewhere under the rainbow on inktomi/msn...

That said, though the numbers for msn are rather small, I noticed that in the last three months the numbers for msn.com and msn.de switched, last year the referrals from .de were twice the number from .com, now it is just the opposite. Anybody noticed something similiar? And is it worthwile to submit to allesklar.de - either in terms of msn ranking or of google?

[weesnich]

My numbers for last month. The site is completely in German. For the statistics I ignored everything from images.google.*. No PPC programs in use.

gg.de:__________59,8%
gg.at:__________10,3%
gg.com:__________6,2%
de.yahoo:________3,2%
gg.ch:___________2,6%
msn.de:__________2,4%
web.de:__________2,0%
aol.de:__________1,5%
fireball.de:_____1,5%
gg.be:___________1,4%
lycos.de:________1,2%
compuserve.de:___1,1%
yahoo.com:_______1,1%
metager:_________1,0%
directory.gg:____0,9%
directory-yahoo:_0,8%
alltheweb:_______0,6%
msn.com:_________0,6%
tonline:_________0,6%
altavista:_______0,4%
dmoz:____________0,4%
other:___________0,4%

About 5% of the total SE-referrers are from google-cache and therefore may contain the image-referrer-problem, I did no further research on this problem.

I think this high marketshare might be even a problem for Google, as they run into the risk to fall under the antitrust-law for marked-dominating companies in Germany.

[heini]

Thanks, great stuff.
I just can't get my head around those t-online figures. You are sure it's not a problem of correct identification of your tracking programs?
Seeing those numbers T-Online might as well dump their websearch completely.
It 's amazing how anti-internet T-Online operates. It's worse than AOL/MSN actually. The whole philosophy is targeted on containment, closing users in: we are your internet. Shucks. OK - end of sunday rant

>MSN
Can't say isee that in my logs. In fact I don't see MSN.com for german sites at all.

[hyperion]

> I just can't get my head around those t-online figures. You are sure it's not a problem of correct identification of your tracking programs?

I don't think so. As you said, the t-online-search is pure bulls***. Nobody will search there if he knows an alternative. And, the biggest error I think is the interface-design: the websearch is located on the frontpage simply as "Suche" - how can a user know this is a websearch, not a sitesearch, like on all other sites?
Since the site I posted the stats for targets mainly tech-savy engineers, I think the numbers are correct, if you've got sites that target the mainstream, the number may be higher.

[heini]

>mainstream
That explains it then. Nobody remotely websavvy would use T-online. The sites I assmebled the stats from are definitely non techie.

[weesnich]

My site is in no way targeted for webmaniacs, it offers no computer- or webrelated content.

I just checked the referrer-reports manually - I get very, very litte traffic from brisbane.t-online.de; not only last month. I think the statistics are correct and the month posted was no exceptionally bad month for t-online.
For ranking-side: the site is better ranked in google, but not very bad at the t-online - results.

[oLeon]

- generally: no banner, no adwords, no ppc, and in these cases no directories, too
- numbers are from dec-02 and jan-03

# 1 (products) 
search engine.....%.......sum...Index  
Google.de.......54,6%....74,6%..Google  
Google.com .....15,7%  
T-Online.........6,5%....18,4%..FAST  
Alltheweb.com....4,8% --> not only, also other FAST-Partners 
Lycos.de.........4,4%  
Fireball.de......3,6%.....3,6%..Fireball  
MSN.de...........2,4%.....2,4%..Inktomi  
Metager..........1,7%  
Web.de...........1,6%  
Yahoo.com........1,3%  
Freenet.de.......1,1%  
Google.ch........1,0%  
Altavista.de....0,35%.....0,4%..AV  
Google.fr.......0,20%  
Google.it.......0,12%  
Altavista.com...0,08%  
Lycos.com.......0,07%  
AOL.com.........0,06% 

# 1 (travelling) 
search engine.....%......sum....Index 
Google.de.......50,3%....66,3%..Google 
Google.com......12,1% 
T-Online........8,3%.....19,9%..FAST 
MSN.de..........6,6%.....6,8%...Inktomi 
Lycos.de........5,5% 
Alltheweb.com...3,7% --> not only, also other FAST-Partners 
Fireball.de.....2,6%.....2,6%...Fireball 
Freenet.de......2,1% 
Altavista.de....1,8%.....2,8%...AV 
Metager.........1,5% 
Yahoo.com.......1,4% 
Web.de..........1,3% 
Google.ch.......1,1% 
Altavista.com...1,0% 
MSN.com........0,14% 
Lycos.at.......0,08% 
Metaspinner....0,07% 
Google.fr......0,06% 
Lycos.com......0,05% 
Google.it......0,04% 

as can be seen, the traffic from G is not that big as expected; FAST is also okay, so not all depends on Google ;-)
the numbers from msn are surprising in the 2nd case, arenīt them?

[h_b_k]

search traffic statistics (january+february):

77,7% Google 
 8,7% Yahoo 
 4,4% MSN 
 2,3% T-Online (Fast) 
 2,0% Lycos (Fast) 
 1,2% Web.de 

others (each < 1,0% => 3,7%): Fireball, Netscape, AltaVista, Evreka, AllTheWeb, AOL, Dogpile, Tiscali, Webcrawler, others

(statistics by awstats)

search traffic: about 55% of all visits

google toolbar rank: 5/10
google directory rank: 4/7, since last update: 3/7

no adwords, no ppc
but: a DMOZ entry

[Fischerlaender]

And here are the points from - the german members in here will probably guess it:

February 2003 
engine  share position* 
------------------------- 
Google....82.24% (12) 
MSN .......7.86% ( 4) 
Yahoo......3.08% (12) 
Fireball...2.61% ( 5) 
Lycos......1.87% (10) 
Web.de.....1.69% ( 3) 
AltaVista..0.48% (26) 
dmoz.......0.04%  
AllTheWeb..0.04% 
* with most important keyword

Indeed, it's Google country ...

And where is T-Online? Well, my analysis tool does not regard T-Online as a search engine (which is surely correct *g*). But according to the referrals I get via brisbane.t-online.de it brings about 3%.

[madmatt69]

On all my German sites, they are almost the exact same as what you guys are getting - google.de, google.com, yahoo, and then some of the smaller se's. Seems to be the trend.

[heini]

So, what we seem to be looking at is:
Google.de: ~68-70%
Google.com : ~10%
Google.* : ~2-5%
Msn: ~4%
Yahoo: ~3%
T-online: ~3%
Lycos.de: ~2%
Fireball: ~1-2%
Metager: ~1-2%
Web.de: ~1-2%

Obviously we have 80+% Google. The rest is good for approximately 15%. As a surprise for some might come the best of the rest not being Yahoo or T-Online, but MSN.
Clear losers to me are T-online, who throw away huge revenue opportunities. Also noteworthy: AV is not even on the radar anymore.
All in all: Google monoculture.

[Fischerlaender]

I frequently look at the statistics published by WebHits, a web counter service from Germany. Their stats are accumulated from their clients sites.

Their numbers are for today:

Google.......63.3% 
Yahoo.........8.8% 
MSN.......... 6.6% 
Fireball......3.5% 
Web.de........3.5% 
T-Online......3.2% 
Lycos.........2.7% 
AOL...........1.8% 
Metager.......1.4% 
Altavista.....1.3%

In this statistic Yahoo, MSN and T-Online are better than they seem to be in the logs of SEO-aware people. Obviously SEOs are concentrating on Google and so Google has a larger share in their referrals.

[yezariael]

I got _some_ Fast-Traffic.

But since Fast is harder to optimize i dare not touch my sites when Google-results are fine :)

This is from a week in February but stats are almost the same every week.

Google is approx. 86%, Fast 4,91% (Percentages are from all referrals not only SE)

1 www.google.de 69.63
2 de.search.yahoo.com 4.33
3 www.google.com 4.17
4 brisbane.t-online.de 3.43
5 www.google.at 2.78
6 www.google.ch 2.26
7 search.msn.de 1.68
8 suche.lycos.de 1.48
9 sucheaol.aol.de 0.59
11 mserv.rrzn.uni-hannover.de 0.91
12 suche.web.de 1.11
13 de.altavista.com 54 0.44
14 www.freenet.de 0.53
15 search.yahoo.com 0.44
16 www.google.nl 0.38
18 suche.netscape.de 0.17
19 suche.fireball.de 0.10

10 [images.google.de...] 1.04
20 [images.google.com...] 0.23

[netnerd]

My sites here in the uk are optimised well for google, so i get most of my traffic from google and yahoo.

Does anyone have any stats for the uk to see if i should be targeting other engines more?