New Search Engine Market Share, Popular Search Terms Announced
Via Search Engine Watch, we find that Nielsen//Netratings has just released (PDF) November tallies for search engine market share and most popular search terms, as of November 2005. Without further ado:
| Engine | Share % | Total Searches (x1000) |
| 46.3 | 2,365,998 | |
| Yahoo | 25.4 | 1,194,519 |
| MSN | 11.4 | 583,304 |
| AOL | 6.9 | 350,899 |
| MyWay | 2.5 | 129,555 |
| Ask Jeeves | 2.3 | 119,679 |
| Earthlink | .6 | 32,172 |
| Dogpile | .6 | 31,563 |
| Netscape | .6 | 30,434 |
| iWon | .5 | 27,670 |
source: Nielsen//NetRatings MegaView Search, January 2006
My initial thoughts here are that while the top three engines more or less maintained their share, Google's growing involvement with and potential influence over AOL could do real damage to Y and M and cause fewer and fewer people to believe it's still anyone's game. (And believing may be all it takes, as John suggested on Monday.)
In addition to the search engine market share numbers, N//N also released the top 10 search terms for November:
| Search Term | Total Queries |
| "ebay" | 13,871,000 |
| "google" | 13,301,000 |
| "yahoo" | 7,997,000 |
| "mapquest" | 7,431,000 |
| "yahoo.com" | 6,528,000 |
| "pogo.com" | 4,062,000 |
| "walmart" | 3,688,000 |
| "ask jeeves" | 3,389,000 |
| "msn" | 3,166,000 |
| "ebay.com" | 3,125,000 |
source: Nielsen//NetRatings MegaView Search, January 2006
I guess I shouldn't always be so shocked at the number of people who use the Search box to type full or partial URLs.
Ken Cassar, chief analyst for Nielsen//NetRatings, had an interesting analysis of this segment (my emphasis added):
"There are two types of online searchers that type a Web site’s URL into a search engine rather than into the browser’s address bar: Those inexperienced enough not to appreciate the difference between the two, and those that are so experienced they have become habituated to using the search engine as their portal to the Internet.
Try as I might, I'm not sure I will ever buy the last part of that. It's like saying that I'm pushing my car down the street because I'm too savvy to drive it. I believe that truly savvy users have come to view the browser - not the search engine - as the portal to the Internet.
But Cassar ends with a note we can all live with:
Whether this behavior is driven by ignorance or savvy, the end result is the same: The search engine is the focal point of the online experience for Internet users across the spectrum.
Amen to that.