Google vs Yahoo and MSN in Traffic

How big is Goliath really and how small is Davey?

[ohwell]

Did some studying over at alexa.com. Their figures are based on their toolbar but it is known to be a good indicator of traffic.

Seems the site with the biggest "reach" (which means someone visited at least one of their pages) is NOT Google it is Yahoo! That's right. It is close but overall Yahoo, at least today had a tad more overall "traffic". And MSN is third right on their heels.

Ok. Ok. yes Google has more searches. About 8 times as many. And about 11 times as many as MSN. 70% search from Google. 9% search from Yahoo and 6% search from MSN. At least from their main search pages.

However, about 3% leave through Google for another site (click thru) where as both MSN and Yahoo both have about 7% going through to another site. Which in essence cuts the 8 times to 3 1/2 times and the 11 times to 5 times.

Check it out for yourself. Figure in cheaper clicks, less BS, more stability at least for a while and things are a lot tighter in actuality. Yes G has more but not that much more.

Comments? I think I am pretty accurate with interpreting the numbers. Now if alexa's sample method via their toolbar is accurate, I don't know.

[Tropical Island]

Their figures are based on their toolbar but it is known to be a good indicator of traffic.

This in fact is not correct - just do a site search here for "Alexa" and read some of the threads.

Check it out for yourself. Figure in cheaper clicks, less BS, more stability at least for a while and things are a lot tighter in actuality. Yes G has more but not that much more.

My sites place very well in all three SEs. My traffic and sales come mainly from G - 80% as opposed to about 12% for Y and 7% for MSN while the other 1% goes to the rest.

As far as PPC I also have had both AW and Over/Yahoo for years. O/Y traffic has plummeted and is mostly garbage from dubious search partners - good luck there. Just read the MSN forum for their PPC problems - good luck there.

[edited by: Tropical_Island at 12:28 pm (utc) on July 15, 2006]

[venrooy]

My yahoo ppc has been doing rather well lately. It accounts for up to 40% of my ppc traffic on most days, and has a much higher conversion rate than google.

My MSN traffic has been slowly on the rise as well. Conversion rate there is suprisingly good also.

And remember, if MS has their way, every browser that comes out of there will have a default msn search. We all know what that type of behavior did to Netscape during the browser wars.

[toomer]

70% search from Google. 9% search from Yahoo and 6% search from MSN.

I have some different numbers on file from a table I found quite a long time ago and copied down (Google Notebook is so handy).

"Domestic ComScore Search Data" (source: comScore; Bear Stearns)

Market Share of Searches - Q405

Google 39.8%
Yahoo 29.3%
MSN 14.3%
AOL 8.5%
Ask 6.6%

39.8% for Google seemed way low to me when I read it -- but Bear Stearns at least seems like a reputable enough name? Don't know -- I'm wondering if anyone else has some numbers from another source ....

[surftrack]

add aol and google together...and there you go :)

[TheDonster]

Alexa's drawback is their numbers are based on the toolbar stats. I downloaded the toolbar for fun and used it in my main browser for about 3 months. My site requires daily attention and I visit it at least once a day. The rank for my site went from over 200k to under 30k in just 3 months, due only to my visits. It is way too easy to manipulate Alexa's numbers. And btw, Myspace just passed Yahoo lately as the most visited site on the net!

[ohwell]

Good point Donster. I guess alexa's sample size is just too small. OTOH, with all due respect, a lot more people are visting G and Y than your site, but I don't know.

I do know that G, Y, MSN seem to be the only games in town in terms of big traffic. Every other PPC I have checked on lately has maybe .1%-1% (1/1000 to 1/100 at best) the traffic.

The main trouble with small engines is not so much the small amount of traffic but the adminstration to now manage all these little accounts/bookkeeping ect if a guy were to add say 50 small ppcs and get back a little of the lost traffic. But it could be done I guess.

[Tropical Island]

I was reading Matt Cutts' blog this morning and he talks about metrics and the problems Google had in convincing the bean counters that their search levels were much higher than was being reported. This addresses the exact problem of services like Alexa:

At some point, one of the metrics services (which shall remain nameless) came to Google so that we could try to reconcile our data with their claims. I wasn’t in the meeting, so afterwards I caught an engineer and asked what happened; why did our numbers differ by so much? “They solicit people to install an application for them” was the answer. “But that’s a horrible methodology!” I said. “That would get you a ton more novice users; expert users wouldn’t see the value and probably wouldn’t install the application as much.” The other engineer agreed.

That was an eyeopener for me. At the time, Google was much more popular with highly-technical users, who were less likely to show up in that metric. So while Google gained market share, that particular methodology always lagged in showing Google’s growth. In a way, it was a blessing in disguise: if competitors took the metrics at face value, they would underestimate Google and how fast it was growing. Ever since, I’ve taken every metric with a grain of salt–you have to think about underlying assumptions and limitations in the data.

[edited by: Tropical_Island at 10:25 am (utc) on July 16, 2006]