Microsoft's Search Share Edges Up

[engine]

Bolstered by a site that requires users to use its search engine for games, Microsoft's Live search engine increased its query volume 67 % from May to June, while as Yahoo's query volume edged downward, according to a new study.

While Google still owns the largest share of the search market with 62% of all search queries in June, up from 55% last year, the query volume of its long-time closest competitor Yahoo was down 16% compared to June 2006, according to a study released this week by web analytics firm Compete.com.

MSN's share of search queries grew from 10 % in June 2006 to 13% in June 2007, boosted mainly from its Live Search Club, where users can play games for points that can be redeemed for Microsoft products, Compete.com said. All of the games involve the use of the Live search engine. With no traffic at all to the club site in April, traffic shot up to 3 million unique visitors in June, according to Compete.

Microsoft's Search Share Edges Up [computerworld.com]

[kkobashi]

Clever marketing and timing. But they really need to step it up by offering the same across the MSN Games/Zone.com sites. If so, that could continue to put a dent in Yahoo's search volume for this targeted age demographics.

[koan]

Clever marketing and timing.

I dunno, it amounts to paying users in some way to use your search engine. Long term, they'd be better off investing money into improving the engine instead.

[m0thman]

Don't think they can do it. Personally find everything MSN Live feels a little bit dead - dead slow compared to Google offerings. JMHO

Yawhoo?

[jeffgroovy]

Oh boy, now MSN is resorting to incentivized traffic to fuel it's search engine. It's a new low. AdCenter advertisers beware. What next, in order to log onto Windows, I'll have to perform 3 searches first? I agree Koan, how about investing in the actual product instead.

[elsewhen]

i have noticed that MS is advertising heavliy on the intellitxt network... they are driving traffic directly to their search results pages. i wonder if this is also playing a significant role in the increase.

[Receptional]

AdCenter advertisers beware.

As long as it continues to convert better than G, I'll take it. Query share is what advertisers really need on Microsoft.

I agree, though, that the organic algo is the ultimate key to query share. Problem is that the high conversion rates of the paid traffic might be due to the irrelevency of the organic results.

[superclown2]

If more than a third of their hits come from gamers (who are mainly kids) then shouldn't advertisers be made aware of this? I've had to block most universities in the UK and USA from my servers because of problems they caused me.

[jeffgroovy]

As long as it continues to convert better than G, I'll take it. Query share is what advertisers really need on Microsoft.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that you aren't buying gaming traffic from Microsoft. While I agree that traffic that converts is what counts, I also have to add that I've never been able to turn a profit on incentivized traffic, but who knows maybe the gaming industry is different. I definitely agree with your comment about query share at Microsoft. The traffic I've purchased through AdCenter has been high quality, it's just been at such a low volume that I only log into the account once a month to check stats on it.