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I am looking for increases in real traffic from the other engines, not increases in percentages. Obviously if your google results are in the toilet, all the other SEs will be providing a lot higher percentage of your traffic.
For example, my big traffic site is a product review site that gets most of it's traffic from what businesses would consider commercial product searches.
It is not in a highly competitive area, so while Florida had some impact, it was not major and the SERPs remained generally relevant. My users may no be searching in the areas that got the terrible results so they aren't switching. I am wondering if searcher in those other areas really are switching.
So here are my numbers for the main search engines:
December (So far)
- Google 34604
- Yahoo 9545
- AOL 1169
- MSN 1158
- Netscape 388
- AltaVista 305
- Excite 86
- AllTheWeb 38
- Teoma 33
- Looksmart 26
October
- Google 26997
- Yahoo 7446
- MSN 1541
- AOL 807
- Netscape 328
- AltaVista 306
- Lycos 55
- Excite 50
- AllTheWeb 39
- Overture 34
- Teoma 34
- Looksmart 19
From looking at my numbers, usage of the non-google results is flat or even down.
I'm sure that some of it is rankings fluctuation, but it seems to me that if users were going to AV en masse, that I should get more of a traffic jump than -1.
Are any of the real estate or travel sites seeing a jump in real numbers from other SEs? Or are the claims related to traffic percentages?
That's why we need a reasonable sample.
Don't wish to be a killjoy but with 3.6 billion pages out there...............We could very easily end up deceiving ourselves by having a sample *nowhere near large enough*.
Quite frankly I can see no reason for users to desert Google, at least not until there is somewhere better to desert to! Nobody seems to come close to doing a free deep crawl of the web (no even ATW)like google. I for one still find Google head and shoulders above all the rest.
I don't think there will be much of a noticeable drop in total Google searchers over the entire web for awhile. The fact is, average users won't lead the move toward new search engines because they aren't sophisticated enough to know something is going on unless the Google change is ridiculously bad. The first move away from Google would come from the hard core of experienced searchers out there. Whether that has occurred yet, I don't know. But they will be the ones to lead the change, if it occurs.
I can say that I would be uneasy if I were Google. They're betting that searchers will prefer huge general sites in a category, rather than smaller targeted niche sites. And this is the case with noncommercial info sites, not just commercial sites. My drift on it is that they have gone off course a bit.
This month the overall traffic is down but yet Yahoo and Google are head to head..
Google visits are increasing but are still pitiful as a percentage of searches and traffic.
October
Total 60109
4250 on site search
2319 [search.msn.com...]
1465 [search.msn.com...]
394 on site search
109 [search.msn.com...]
53 [search.cometsystems.com...]
37 [google.com...]
December
Total 52449
3641 on site search
1101 [search.msn.com...]
836 [search.msn.com...]
458 on site search
338 [search.msn.com...]
252 [google.com...]
I think that the relevancy of Google referrals clarifies, rather than clouds, this issue. My raw-# referrals from Google are actually UP, but they are mostly for non-relevant searches, so my useful referrals from Google are actually DOWN. (An increase in non-relevant referrals is also hard evidence of increased user dissatisfaction, assuming they prefer to actually find what they are looking for!) I also find it enlightening to see that many others here are observing the same thing.
However, getting back to the #'s, as I stated previously, this is not an isolated case. I am seeing this same trend in ALL of our and our client's web sites, I just went to the effort to dig-through the #'s for one of them as you wanted to see some specifics.
I would dispute the contention that MSN search is only used by people who have MSN, given that MSN is now a solid third in terms of referrals to all our sites (right behind Yahoo, and closing fast!)
However, just to test this out, I traced the first 20 MSN referrals for December -
Corporate Intranet (6)
Quest (3)
Charter Cable (2)
Government Intranet (2)
IGC Communications
AT&T Worldnet
AOL
Comcast Cable
SBC Internet
CBeyond
RoadRunner
None of them were using MSN!
I found the AOL one most interesting, that an AOL user would abandon AOL's (Google-fed) built-in search to use MSN instead!
As I indicated, MSN is moving up on all of our sites. When adjusted for the partial month, GaryK is showing an increase as well, and Vespasian is also reporting an increase. Jimbeetle's #'s, while expressed in relative %, also appear to indicate a noticeable increase. Others in other threads on this forum have also mentioned an increase in MSN referrals. So it would appear this is not just a statistical fluctuation.
With regards to Comet, they also have some kind of search. We do not advertise with them, but our site has been around for so many years that we have free listings with many PPC sites as well, apparently we got "grandfathered-in" when many of these companies first started.
I think Google would much prefer that if people were to start going elsewhere, that it be to someplace like AV. An increase in MSN Search usage is a much more serious concern, especially considering M$'s stated intentions in the Search Engine Marketplace!
<edit>fixed typo in table</edit>
October...
1 www.google.com 12,609 50.8%
2 search.yahoo.com 5,398 21.8%
3 search.msn.com 2,778 11.2%
4 www.google.ca 1,290 5.2%
5 aolsearch.aol.com 681 2.7%
6 search.netscape.com 280 1.1%
7 web.ask.com 207 0.8%
November....
1 www.google.com 12,594 51.3%
2 search.yahoo.com 5,170 21.0%
3 search.msn.com 2,693 11.0%
4 www.google.ca 1,329 5.4%
5 aolsearch.aol.com 645 2.6%
6 web.ask.com 319 1.3%
7 search.netscape.com 273 1.1%
December....
1 www.google.com 9,171 52.5%
2 search.yahoo.com 3,696 21.2%
3 search.msn.com 1,820 10.4%
4 www.google.ca 849 4.9%
5 aolsearch.aol.com 383 2.2%
6 web.ask.com 316 1.8%
7 search.netscape.com 154
I don't really see any difference between asking Alexa for stats or me? Both are third party results.
FWIW we have barely perceptible changes in secondary SE referals. I won't even both posting the numbers since the change is almost nil.
The big question is - are people deserting Google for other SEs or do they just give up on the internet and shut off their PC? Perhaps they just think if it's not on Google they won't find it anywhere.
I know you don't want to discuss the quality of referrals here but it's obviously relevant. If referrals are worthless then in my mind they are just spam. Our site seems to be single handedly supplying all metro map downloads for Barcelona. Of course that's not what we do! Apart from that our top referring keywords are 000000 and 333333! Top notch targeting Google!
"It sounds like your clients are asking the questions that they should have been asking all along. If Y! goes with Ink, they might have found themselves hurting (but not as bad) in a couple of months anyway. Ignoring the larger minor players is even stupider than designing your site for IE only."
Usually, I answer their questions in the following manner:
"Shouldn't we target Inktomi?"
We already target Inktomi and are ranking well there now.
"How does one get high ranking on MSN?"
MSN is powered by Overture, Looksmart, and Inktomi. Since I target Zeal and Inktomi I have the free elements covered. If you wish you can pay for ranking with Overture and pay per click with Looksmart.
as well as "Should I spend money on Adwords?"
Like Overture, Adwords can be expensive test it for a short time and determine the ROI. Personally, I feel better not advertising with either.
Even though Google killed my rankings and my traffic from it dropped I had always planned for this kind of thing to happen. Overall my traffic only dropped 10%. A negative Google experience several years ago, prepared me for this. I had one site which for no reason was dropped from Google then a year later reappeared without changes in the top 10 for major keywords. I learned never to trust Google and to diversify.
From the Alexa website:
-----
Some Important Disclaimers
The traffic data are based on the set of Alexa users, which may not be a representative sample of the global Internet population. Known biases include (but are likely not limited to) the following:
* Our users are disproportionately likely to visit alexa.com, amazon.com and archive.org, and traffic to these sites may be substantially overcounted.
* The Alexa Toolbar works only with the Internet Explorer browser. Sites frequented mainly by users of other browsers will be undercounted. For example, the AOL/Netscape browser is not supported, which means that Alexa collects little data from AOL users, and our traffic to aol.com is likely lower than it would be for a more representative sample.
* The Alexa Toolbar works only on Windows operating systems. Although a large majority of the Internet population currently use Windows, traffic to any sites which are disproportionately visited by users of other operating systems will be undercounted.
* The rate of adoption of Alexa software in different parts of the world may vary widely due to advertising locality, language, and other geographic and cultural factors. For example, to some extent the prominence of Korean sites among our top-ranked sites reflects known high rates of general Internet usage in South Korea, but there may also be a dispropotionate number of Korean Alexa users.
* In some cases traffic data may also be adversely affected by our "site" definitions. With tens of millions of hosts on the Internet, our automated procedures for determining which hosts are serving the "same" content may be incorrect and/or out-of-date. Similarly, the determinations of domains and home pages may not always be accurate. When these determinations change (as they do periodically), there may be sudden artificial changes in the Alexa traffic rankings for some sites as a consequence.
* The Alexa Toolbar turns itself off on secure pages (https:). Sites with more secure page views will be under-represented in the Alexa traffic data.
In addition to the biases above, the Alexa user base is only a sample of the Internet population, and sites with relatively low traffic will not be accurately ranked by Alexa due to the statistical limitations of the sample. Alexa's data come from a large sample of several million Alexa Toolbar users; however, this is not large enough to accurately determine the rankings of sites with fewer than roughly 1,000 total monthly visitors. Generally, Traffic Rankings of 100,000+ should be regarded as not reliable because the amount of data we receive is not statistically significant. Conversely, the more traffic a site receives (the closer it gets to the number 1 position), the more reliable its Traffic Ranking becomes.
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As for the relevance of google traffic in this discussion. The lack of relevance of the search results has been well covered in far too many other threads.
There is no doubt that it is relevant, it is *why* people would leave, if they actually are. It just has nothing to do with finding out if people *are* leaving. We need to be looking for across the board increases in traffic from other search engines to find that information. Everything esle is noise.
I also stand by my belief that most regular MSN searcher are MSN users. People at wrk that use MSN at home are likely to use the SE they are most familiar with. And if you take work out of the mix, your top users are Qwest and Charter, which are both MSN. A good percentage of the others are probably from IE defaulting to an msn search when it cannot find a website.
And don't forget that my MSN traffic is down (and I still rank high in all the searches on MSN that I checked) and so is Hardwood Guy. Ever since MSN started listing more than about 20 of my pages in April, the numbers from them have been all over the place.
March 99
April 1819
May 1949
June 1454
July 1402
August 1371
September 1129
October 1541
November 1821
December 1179
So as far as my site is concerned, it is within the normal fluctuation of MSN.
The problem with MSN numbersx is that increases there do not necessarily represent defections from Google. MSN has a lot of broadband lockin, and they also have an advertising campaign that puts AOL to shame.
So while lots of people are seeing an increase in MSN numbers, and that *is* significant, it is not as significant as if it was increasing across the board at the same time as the other pure Search Engine plays.
So far it looks like ask is the most consistantly up, but we don't even have enough of a sample there.
From the Alexa website:-----
Some Important Disclaimers
The traffic data are based on the set of Alexa users, which may not be a representative sample of the global Internet population. Known biases include (but are likely not limited to) the following:
From the SlyOldDog words of caution:
1) Surfers viewing an SEOed website are no more a representative sample of internet users than Alexa users are.
2) A lot of webmasters have big egos and also have alterior motives for posting messages.
3) Webmasters optimize for Google and hence are likely to show a diproportioately skewed portion of Google referrals
4) Webmasters often don't answer the questions you ask and prefer to talk about themselves.
Good luck in your search for data BigDave :)
Lets not kid ourselves, Google is number one and will be for a very long time. I think these people that are saying people are leaving Google in droves are just afraid they will never achieve top ranking again. I truly fell bad for everyone that has lost ranking. In fact i did for about a month and i have moved back up. Instead of complaing about it i adjusted my site, added more quality content, used Google Adwords, and waited patiently.
I wish you all the luck in the world but Google is still number 1.
I keep reading rants by upset commercial webmasters that the results are so bad that users are leaving Google in droves. I'm not personally seeing this on any of my websites, and I'm wondering if anyone is willing to show some of their actual numbers?
Since I know of people that have moved away from Google, I know that there are some. None of them thought that Google was as bad as many here claim, they just decided to try some of the others again since Google wasn't as good as it used to be.
But it is well under 1% of the people that I know. and they still use Google when the other engines fail them. It is more that they have expanded their options, rather than a switch.
If people were really leaving google, even at the level of 1% of the Google users, we would not be talking about a 20% increase for the other pure SE plays, we would be talking about several hundred percent or more. And all the other engines should be up across the board. I cannot imagine a mass exodus from Google without AV gaining *any* if that market share.
So my conclusion is that they just ain't leaving yet in any significant numbers. Google might be in danger of losing more, but they haven't left yet.
I think this is a fair and more accurate conclusion, Dave.
Most of my traffic over the past week has come from Yahoo
and other SE.
Note today for a huge number of my keywords Yahoo has not followed the Google changes.
Why should be to move to AltaVista?
