The numbers coming out of ComScore and Nielsen for search engine share of traffic don't appear to reflect reality, I noted that before and others are saying the same thing now.
Skrentablog mentions that the real Google Search Traffic Share based on Search Referral traffic is close to 70% (of all search traffic) based on common sites who's referral traffic can be read using analytics (see below):
The results:
Site hitwise-google hitwise-yahoo hitwise-msn hitwise-ask Yahoo MSN Ask hitwise-total apple.com 8.62 2.38 1.69 0 67.9% 18.8% 13.3% 0.0% 12.69 craigslist 7.48 3.4 1.17 0.12 61.5% 27.9% 9.6% 1.0% 12.17 ebay 10.12 3.36 2.57 0.44 61.4% 20.4% 15.6% 2.7% 16.49 flickr 17.72 7.26 1.34 0.45 66.2% 27.1% 5.0% 1.7% 26.77 nytimes 16.67 2.84 1.34 0.53 78.0% 13.3% 6.3% 2.5% 21.38 topix.net 40.5 10.02 0.65 1.56 76.8% 19.0% 1.2% 3.0% 52.73 tripadvisor 47.57 5.87 3.51 1.42 81.5% 10.1% 6.0% 2.4% 58.37 usatoday 6.43 2.07 1.4 0 64.9% 20.9% 14.1% 0.0% 9.9 wikipedia 48.36 10.98 3.66 2.57 73.8% 16.7% 5.6% 3.9% 65.57 youtube 12.97 2.28 2.16 0 74.5% 13.1% 12.4% 0.0% 17.41 Average 70.6% 18.7% n="right" class="xl28">8.9% 1.7%
Looking at my own traffic for Webmetricsguru.com for December 06 (partial)
Google = 67.62%, Images.google.com = Yahoo = 2.87% (ouch!), MSN= (not on the map at all).
So…. if we add Google + Google Images = 70.49% which is dead center what the average referral traffic share from Google is - meaning that Google's Search Share is really between 70-71%.
It's no surprise to me, but some people still are surprised at the numbers.
