Hey Brits step away from that pint, input needed

Is MSN a Major Search Consideration, or are they small fries?

[martinibuster]

I read a fluff piece about an American, David Blaine, starving himself in a box that's getting pelted with eggs by fun loving Brits, but it turns out that this guy is one of MSN UK's top search queries.

Robin Kellet, MSN's search manager said in the article [sky.com] that 3.8 million people use MSN UK every month, which works out to around 126,000 searches per day.

That strikes me as kind of low. What's the deal? Is MSN an also ran?

[Dayo_UK]

martinbuster

Bit confused by your Math here.

3.8 Million users would do more than 126,000 searches a day. I imagine most people do more than one search on average per day.

Figures suggest that there are 22-30 Million Internet Users in the UK. So 12-17% use MSN for search - I would imagine that would be about right.

(As you can see by the other top results from the article - these users are the type who are interested in David Blaine, Eastenders, Fame Academy - oh well!).

[piskie]

I have just looked at last weeks logs for one site I manage and as far as refers go, it was:

Google 2,191
Yahoo 1,404
MSN 1,157
Nothing else over 300

I hope that helps put MSN in perspective.

[percentages]

For me a site that ranks comparably on MSN UK (Inktomi) results to Google yields 22% of total SE referrals.

That's a little lower than piskie's numbers, but within 2%.

I'm waiting for the numbers without L$ pollution, but I suspect a big increase (5%+) is coming.

So the answer is that MSN is a big player in the UK and US, and more importantly, growing when others are declining.

Two years ago MSN had 8% of total SE market share, we have seen a large decline at AOL and Yahoo in this period.....most of which has gone to MSN. True Google referrals have grown a tad (% wise), but lost considerably overall due to the shortfall of its partners.

If you're planning for the future, MSN (Inktomi then Longhorn/MS whatever) is the horse to be on ;)

[millie]

My stats represent similar information to piskie (%-wise)across all our sites but I have found the quality of MSN traffic is very poor when compared with Google and Yahoo.

David Blaine search frenzy sounds about right.

[IanTurner]

My figures are approximately

Google 65%
MSN 12%
Yahoo 12%
Ask Jeeves 4%
Altavista 1.5%
AOL 1.5%

I have seen a steady rise in Jeeves this year

[millie]

Hi all,
Ian - interested to see that AOL is such a low referrer for you too - with all this talk of AOL traffic having the best conversion rate I was getting worried about this.

Does this mean that Overture is the only way to get good results in AOL because my placement in Google is good but it's not filtering through to AOL at all.

[nicebloke]

MSN UK is definitley not an also ran. They drive huge amounts of traffic in the UK. Definitey not to be underestimated.

[gibbon]

we have the same issue with aol

no traffic

are we missing out on lots of gold customers waiting to convert on our site?

[IanTurner]

MSN UK - Very good for consumer stuff - not so good for techie stuff. Similarly AOL and AJ.

If you're doing techie its Google plus any other traffic you can find.

[gibbon]

starting to see the light

there is a whole world of non google customers out there - must find them!

[GodLikeLotus]

UK Targeted Site, November's Stats

www.google.co.uk 21.02%
www.google.com 20.65%
uk.search.msn.com 9.91%
search.yahoo.com 6.76%
www.ask.co.uk 6.24%
uk.search.yahoo.com 4.34%
aolsearch.aol.co.uk 3.71%
search.msn.com 2.49%
search.freeserve.com 1.34%
google.btopenworld.com 1.04%

They are certainly my number 2 for traffic.

[yorkcity]

an interesting time to be discussing MSN.

in the Looksmart days - we got around 20% of referrals from MSN.

but this has dropped now Inktomi is now the supplier.

we have had a number of meetings on how to get MSN referrals back up - so from that point of view it is important!

[yorkcity]

ps - can i go back to my pint now?