Tide change?

MSN up Google down.. on Alexa.

[cleanup]

I know that generally people don't place a lot of importance on the Alexa data. I tend only to use it for trends.

I notice recently that comparing google and msn traffic it seems that for the first time in a long while the stats look encouraging for MSN
alexa [alexa.com]

Are we starting to see a tide change away from Google?

Any comments?

[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 1:56 pm (utc) on Feb. 13, 2007]
[edit reason] shortened url to fix side scroll [/edit]

[AndyA]

It makes sense to me. With IE7 part of the Windows automatic download, and Live Search integrated into IE7 the way it is as the default, a lot of people might not change it to Google. Especially given the fact that Google seems to not be as good lately as it once was.

I know my site isn't listed in Google the way I think it should be, so it figures other quality sites aren't as well. So when I do a search on Google now, I often wonder what I'm missing.

[zafile]

Wow!

I added www.yahoo.com to the "Compare sites:" bar and it's simply amazing how IE7 is leveling the field.

I wonder what Google will do to fix this.

In the meantime, it's great to have 3 sources of traffic instead of one!

[inbound]

Let me be the first to throw in an off the wall conspiracy theory... just for fun

Do you think Vista was delayed a little further on purpose, to allow MSN/Live time to improve their search offering? Although Windows is a huge cash cow, we all know that Microsoft has serious catching up to do in search.

Scenario 1:
Launch as soon as it's 'ready' but with a search product that's still alpha, rather than beta.

Scenario 2:
Delay until msn search can serve most (read inxperienced) searchers well enough to not bother changing to Google.

[inbound]

Note of caution:

Remember that the visitor profile of MSN.com and Live.com is weighted towards entertainment/communication rather than search.

Look at the subdomain breakdowns on the 2 above and you will see that search is a tiny percentage of traffic on either site.

[AndyA]

When you compare google.com to live.com, you can see that Google traffic is dropping off, and Live is coming up. search.live.com came up with the same results. Google is still way out in front, but the gap is getting smaller.

[jakegotmail]

MSN. LOL

there results are still horrible.

The day MSN takes over as the largest search player is the day pigs will fly.

[europeforvisitors]

Are we starting to see a tide change away from Google?

That seems unlikely, especially with Google having struck a deal to be the search provider for MySpace.com.

I'd be skeptical of using Alexa to compare search-engine traffic and market share.

Also, when you ask about the tide changing, which tide do you mean? The search market can be subdivided in many ways (by country or by language, for example), and a trend in one segment may be contrary to a trend in another.

[londrum]

didn't google try and take them to court last year... for including msn as the default search? i guess they saw it coming.
seems like the pot calling the kettle black though, as i've had a few other progams ask me whether i want to install google toolbar alongside them (doesn't firefox do that now?)

[annej]

Having MSN search the default for IE7 will get a lot more people searching with live.com. A lot of people won't bother to change to Google and a lot more just won't have a clue how.

I'm sure the only reason MSN gives any other options than live.com is that they were forced to.

[AndyA]

There have been a few times lately when I haven't been able to find what I was looking for on Google. This was not related to my site, but a personal search. No doubt the pages that have the info I needed are buried at the bottom of Google's results, but now Google won't let me go that far, because it thinks my Internet Explorer browser is some sort of automated query bot. NOT.

So, I just click over to Live Search and guess what? Right there at #1, 2, or 3 is just the site I needed! Now that is how a SE should work. Google is just getting too difficult to deal with, IMO. And this Error page forbidding me from searching is really a bad idea.

[simey]

After the last few years, there's only one way for MSN search to go (up), both in terms of share and quality.
Google is smart, but they should also consider themselves lucky due to the state of the competition IMO.

[RichTC]

Google could have held onto its users better if it hadnt rolled out this new infastructure with constant algo changes that currently produces poor serps.

Its no longer as relevent as it was and as a result many users are having to use other search engines to find what they want.

Frankly i find live search poor however with googles lack of exact relevancy anylonger whats the point of changing?

Google needs to remember that it was exact search match that gave it the market search leed over the earlier poor search engines that were not as relevent with their results.

Now the boots on the other foot, users wont go out of their way to use google now its lost its relevancy, so unless they improve the seps quickly i can see the fall off in google use being very significant.

THe OP makes a very valid point here