Search Engine Traffic share for US searches were just posted yesterday by Nielson//NetRatings. According to ClickZ
"The number of U.S. searches grew 55 percent in December 2005 over December 2004, according to data released by Nielsen//NetRatings. "
| Top Three U.S. Search Share Rankings by Percentage Points, December 2004 and 2005 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Search Engine | December 2004 Search Share (%) | December 2005 Search Share (%) | Change (Percentage Points) |
| 43.1 | 48.8 | 5.7 | |
| Yahoo! | 21.7 | 21.4 | -0.3 |
| MSN | 14.0 | 10.9 | -3.1 |
| Source: Nielsen//NetRatings, February 2006 | |||
Most of the sites who i do both Web Analytics and SEO/SEM for show a much greater increase in Search Traffic from Google than the numbers above suggest. In fact, one of my house plans clients had a 300%+ increase in thier Google Search Referral Traffic from Dec 04 to Dec 05.
The data above is actually not the whole story -
"The number of searches isn’t a factor in market share. Each of the three search engines experienced double-digit year-over-year growth. Google experienced 75 percent growth, Yahoo! Search went up 53 percent, and MSN Search increased by 20 percent. "
| Top Three U.S. Search Engines by Growth in Searches, December 2004 and 2005 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Search Engine | December 2004 Searches (000) | December 2005 Searches (000) | Growth (%) |
| 1,414,778 | 2,475,895 | 75 | |
| Yahoo! | 711,857 | 1,085,918 | 53 |
| MSN | 460,377 | 553,476 | 20 |
| Source: Nielsen//NetRatings, February 2006 | |||
Even though Google is getting more of the seaches performed (5.7%) and grew by 75% over a years time, Yahoo! (53%)and MSN (20%) are also quickly growning.
In fact, MSN traffic is growing the fastest when I look at the backend analytics of many of my clients. One in particular jumped from having 1000 visits from MSN Search a year ago, to having 10,000 visits recently.
Conversions - that’s another story; more traffic does not neccessary lead to more conversions.
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