SE Statistics in the UK

Any new figures?

[FrenchGuy]

Anybody knows any figure of Search Engines use in the UK?
I work so far with following shortlist:

google.co.uk
yahoo.co.uk
askjeeves.co.uk
msn.co.uk
mirago.co.uk
lycos.co.uk
looksmart.co.uk
altavista.co.uk
ukplus.co.uk
ukindex.co.uk
searchgate.co.uk
searchengine.com
qango.com

IŽd like to rank it according to market relevance and to know other relevant SE and directories.

[bunder]

It is important I think to split the list into search engines and indeed web directories.

Leslie

[cornwall]

Hummmmmmm............

[currybet]

neilsen netratings issued some uk usage figures over xmas with big wins for msn / yahoo & google. btopenworld and passport.com are the only two sites in the top ten domains not offering web search from their homepage:
[nielsen-netratings.com...]

[keeper]

After reading around various internet measurement sources (ACNeilson, Hitwise etc), this seems to be one estimate:

Google UK
MSN UK
Yahoo UK
AskJeeves UK
Ifind (AlltheWeb)
Lycos UK
Altavista UK
Looksmart UK

[tosspot17]

I guess it's difficult to distinguish between people who use the sites for news, email etc. and those who use them to search.

I'm always sceptical about how many people actually go on msn and Yahoo! to search, which makes Google's standings pretty impressive - nearly 100% of their visitors go on to search the web.

Something interesting to note is how far down the list msn.co.uk is to msn.com. THe same goes for Yahoo.co.uk vs. .com

Google.co.uk isn't even in the top ten...

msn.com - 704 million
msn.co.uk - 379 million

[cornwall]

msn.com - 704 million
msn.co.uk - 379 million

Depends on what they are looking for. A lot of the dot com searches will be geared towards searches that are not UK pertinent.

So if you run a UK business, selling mainly to UK punters, then many of the dot com searches are statistically meaningless to you.

[creative craig]

This thread might help:

[webmasterworld.com...]

Might be a little old though :)

Craig

[Michael Anthony]

This was for March 2002 from Jupiter

United Kingdom
March 2002 - Home Users

Site Reach
MSN.COM 43.3%
MSN.CO.UK 41.5%
YAHOO.COM 35.2%
GOOGLE.COM 23.6%
ASKJEEVES.CO.UK 20.6%
YAHOO.CO.UK 19.9%
LYCOS.COM 13.8%
AOL.CO.UK 13.2%
LYCOS.CO.UK 10.1%
GOOGLE.CO.UK 10.1%
AOL.COM 10.0%
LOOKSMART.CO.UK 9.6%
ASKJEEVES.COM 8.0%
GENIE.CO.UK 6.1%
BLUEYONDER.CO.UK 5.9%
ALTAVISTA.CO.UK 4.3%
OVERTURE.COM 3.4%
ALTAVISTA.COM 2.1%
ESPOTTING.COM 1.8%

[Bobby_Davro]

I had 1/2 an hour to spare, so I went through our complete list of UK search engines and did an Alexa traffic ranking comparison. While Alexa has its faults, it provides an interesting set of relative data.

Alexa unfortunately doesn't distinguish between UK and US domains very well, so these don't work:
1 http://uk.yahoo.com (based on yahoo.com)
54 http://www.altavista.co.uk (based on Altavista.com)
89 http://www.uk.goto.com (based on overture.com)
75 http://www.ask.co.uk (based on Ask.com)

The main list:

141 http://www.google.co.uk
173 http://search.msn.co.uk
386 http://www.hotbot.lycos.co.uk
386 http://www.lycos.co.uk
1,018 http://www.looksmart.co.uk
1,780 http://www.aol.co.uk
1,837 http://www.espotting.com
3,113 http://www.fish4.co.uk
8,985 http://www.handbag.com
12,151 http://www.yell.co.uk
12,172 http://www.scoot.co.uk
13,048 http://www.findit.co.uk
16,237 http://www.ukplus.co.uk
16,276 http://www.mirago.co.uk
17,870 http://www.abrexa.co.uk
18,387 http://www.uk250.co.uk
20,301 http://www.uknetguide.co.uk/
28,423 http://www.splut.com
33,619 http://www.searchuk.com
36,017 http://www.searchgate.co.uk
41,091 http://www.toxiclemon.co.uk
45,114 http://www.netlondon.com
46,085 http://www.uksprite.com
48,221 http://www.shopq.co.uk
49,119 http://www.allsearchengines.co.uk
50,334 http://www.askalix.com/uk/
51,746 http://www.searchengine.com
53,377 http://www.limeysearch.co.uk
58,444 http://www.great-british-pages.co.uk
65,330 http://www.ukwebstart.com
67,205 http://www.cyberbritain.co.uk
80,372 http://www.moonmist.info
92,057 http://www.ukindex.co.uk
96,798 http://www.allthatsbritain.com
102,491 http://www.lifestyle.co.uk
105,719 http://www.south-online.co.uk
111,942 http://www.getfavourites.net
114,357 http://www.scotland.com
119,370 http://www.selu.co.uk
119,370 http://www.angliasearch.co.uk
119,370 http://www.maxisearch.co.uk
119,370 http://www.willybanjo.co.uk
125,632 http://www.uksearchking.com
134,590 http://www.shopsonthenet.com
143,436 http://www.250000.co.uk
149,208 http://www.sparksearch.co.uk
161,915 http://www.abacho.co.uk
205,707 http://www.kingdomsearch.co.uk
208,136 http://www.countyweb.co.uk
214,205 http://www.informationchannel.co.uk
231,397 http://www.kellys.co.uk
237,555 http://www.godado.co.uk
240,818 http://www.everydayuk.co.uk
245,390 http://www.londinium.com
246,879 http://www.ukfavourites.com
269,001 http://www.purplepages.ie
277,169 http://www.scotfind.com
317,337 http://www.walesindex.co.uk
357,010 http://www.scottishsearch.com
358,313 http://www.alpha123.co.uk
358,613 http://www.a-zfind.com
408,385 http://www.softdata.co.uk
420,833 http://www.smallbiz.uk.com
434,027 http://www.britishinformation.com
449,928 http://www.spidercrab.net
522,615 http://www.uk-click.co.uk
534,922 http://www.now2business.co.uk
869,087 http://www.shiresearch.co.uk/index.asp
892,287 http://www.gasta.co.uk
925,284 http://www.pepesearch.co.uk
1,246,058 http://www.niportal.co.uk
1,273,627 http://www.valleyalley.co.uk
1,302,546 http://www.clickforchoice.co.uk
1,499,022 http://www.hermia.com
2,601,820 http://www.uk-now.co.uk
2,966,756 http://www.umyup.co.uk
3,112,635 http://www.thematren.co.uk
3,204,318 http://www.cambsearch.co.uk
3,754,582 http://www.canterbury-pages.co.uk

Unknown:
http://www.england-i.com
http://www.mypiranha.com
http://www.scotland-i.com
http://www.ukdirectory.co.uk
http://www.ukferret.com
http://www.wales-i.com

I think that I would put my cut-off point at 100,000. Anything lower than that is hardly worth the time submitting to.

[Bobby_Davro]

Looking through that list, one of the more interesting things is that a couple of the better known search engines are doing fairly poorly, while others are higher than I expected. For example, searchengine.com (searchuk.com) has been around a long time, but it is doing pretty badly in comparison to Mirago, for example. Another poor performer is yell.co.uk; I would have expected more from a site with serious backing and a real world presence. Splut also seems to have dropped somewhat behind the crowd. I always thought that UKIndex was a contender in the UK, but it is miles behind the forerunners.

There are a bunch of 'smaller' SEs that appear to be doing about the same level of traffic - UKplus, Mirago, Abrexa and UK250. The last two are relative newcomers. I have never heard of findit.co.uk, which is also doing very well.

I note that Lycos also appears to be in a very healthy state - more than is suggested by recent discussions I think.

[Bobby_Davro]

Just remembered one more to add to the list:

10,656 Just35.com

That is a big surprise for me, since it places them above Yell, Mirago, UK plus etc. I have never heard a good word spoken about this site, since they are the most expensive PFI site in the world, IIRC.

I am unsure what to make of their traffic levels [alexa.com], since they seem to plummet and soar on a VERY frequent basis. It bounces between 8000 and 60000 with no stable position in between. I don't think that I have seen any other sites with such bizarre traffic patterns on Alexa.

Are the infrequent TV adverts actually bringing in visitors?

[Brett_Tabke]

Do you guys feel the neilsen UK ratings are untrustworthy as I feel the as the US ratings are?

[jmccormac]

Do you guys feel the neilsen UK ratings are untrustworthy as I feel the as the US ratings are?

In Ireland, they are regarded as a bit of PR fodder. They don't particularly reflect reality but look good on press releases. I think the methodology is that they get a few key families/users, monitor their browsing habits. Then these results are 'extrapolated'. The only stats quoted were for big Irish sites. The method that Nielsen uses to gather the stats sounds like an extension of its idiotbox technology. The big sites may get a lot of traffic but the vast majority of traffic is probably spread over thousands (if not millions) of smaller sites. These sites will never make it into the Neilsen ratings.

Regards...jmcc

[keeper]

I wonder what their methodology is behind portals with search features?

For example: Freeserve. Major UK portal. Is their figures only based on the freeserve.com visitations, do they aggregate all subdomains under these results or do they differentiate between portal surfers and searchers who look at search results on ifind.freeserve.com when writing their usage reports?