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Experian Hitwise and comScore have released their July 2010 Search Engine Market Share reports.  Since it’s been a while since we’ve checked in on these stats on the blog, we thought it was an opportune time to comment on the trends we’ve seen since the last post on search engine market share in mid-January this year.

As can be seen from comparing the numbers above, both reports show similar relative levels of search traffic with Google #1, followed by Yahoo, Bing and Ask in that order.  What can’t be seen in the above tables is how these levels have fluctuated over time.  On comScore, search engine market share has fluctuated as follows since November 2009:

1. Google went from 65.5% in November 2009 to 65.8% in July 2010
2. Yahoo went from 17.5% in November 2009 to 17.1% in July 2010
3. Microsoft went from 10.3% in November 2009 to 11.0% in July 2010
4. Ask remained level at 3.8% (after falling below that benchmark)

According to Experian Hitwise, search engine market share has fluctuated as follows since November 2009:

1. Google went from 71.57% in November 2009 to 71.43% in July 2010
2. Yahoo went from 15.39% in November 2009 to 14.43% in July 2010
3. Microsoft went from 9.34% in November 2009 to 9.86% in July 2010
4. Ask went from 2.65% in November 2009 to 2.32% in July 2010

In general the trends from each source are very similar, with the only significant differences being Experian Hitwise reporting a decline in market share for Google and the Ask Search network, whereas comScore reports a gain in market share for Google and a level market share for Ask.  However, overall, Google and Ask remained about level, while Microsoft increased market share and Yahoo lost market share.  Yahoo can be observed gaining back market share in the last two months, while Microsoft has been holding level.

It is interesting to compare these trends in relation to offline marketing.  Google demonstrates a far more steady position than any of the other search engines, yet advertises with the least reach through offline means.  Yahoo and Bing have demonstrated much larger swings in market share while also advertising with much more prominence offline as demonstrated by Yahoo’s current ongoing TV & radio campaign and Bing’s recent launch advertising and re-branding efforts.  While these facts may seem contradictory, with closer examination these are very predictable trends based on the historical positioning of each search engine.

Google’s position as the market leader has been entrenched over many years now.  In the late 90′s Google’s search engine proved superior to competitors and quickly picked up market share based on a quality product.  In Yahoo’s early days, Yahoo positioned itself much differently, operating more like a paid/edited directory than a true search engine scouring all pages on the internet (Yahoo was originally called “Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web”).  The search business to MSN in these days was more of an afterthought.  Google’s superior search results were driven by the fact that Google was the only search engine to look beyond on-page factors and use off-page factors (incoming links, the copy of the incoming links, etc) to rank websites against each other.

In the coming weeks Yahoo and Bing’s search engines will be combined to be driven by Bing’s search algorithm.  This represents a major challenge to Google’s position as market leader, but ultimately this battle can only be won through the perception of which product is of higher quality.  Despite offline advertising, which can move the needle but only temporarily, Google’s position has been earned through high quality as opposed to marketing.  Bing and Yahoo’s extraordinary marketing spends must be accompanied by real improvements to the search experience or else market share gains will prove temporary as they have based on the results of their advertising campaign earlier this year.

Posted in Industry News, Search Marketing Today | 1 Comment »

On Wednesday, June 16th Sitelabbers Rion Morgenstern (@rionSD), Matt Parisi and Jenn Barber (@jennichols) attended the 6th annual Interactive Day at San Diego’s Hilton Bayfront. The San Diego Ad Club set a new record for attendees (420) by nearly doubling last year’s attendance. The Ad Club’s outstanding planning and organization brought us thought leaders from Facebook and Google, marketing agencies, and media providers who led us though sessions and panel discussions workshops.

The sessions were very informative and tactical but it was in the main sessions that the strategic thinkers were heard from. The keynotes started off in the morning with Jack Myers of the M.E.D.I.Advisory Group and a call to innovate. The lunch time keynote was given by Paul Ollinger of Facebook who believes the future of the internet is defined by authenticity and relationships (provided Facebook can get the privacy thing figured out). In the wrap-up panel discussion, Brian Lynch, an Account Director from Yahoo! summed up the day by saying the future was Social, Mobile, Video; we think he is right on target. SiteLab has seen a strong uptick in new business and client requests for this kind of content. Most recently we launched a mobile site for Hass Avocado Board (Mobile Site) to help you select an avocado and our Social Strategy practice has had great success with Sunkist (Facebook).

Here are some highlights from our team:

Rion Morgenstern (Director of Business Development)

Highlight of the Day?

For me personally the highlight of the day was listening to Paul Ollinger, Regional VP of Sales at Facebook speak during the Luncheon Keynote “The Identity Web”. I believe in a strong community strategy and his vision fits right into that idea. Recap on the Interactive Day Facebook Page.

What did you learn?

According to Google, paid search (PPC) gets 14% of clicks on a result page with the balance (86%) going to the organic search results yet the allocated budget numbers are skewed. Last year $20 Billion was spent on PPC yet only $2 Billion was spent on SEO. This teaches us that customers wanting to get the most value from their online marketing budget need to look to an Organic strategy before blowing the bank on PPC.

Matt Parisi (Search Marketing Specialist)

Highlight of the day?

Rand Fishkin from seomoz.com was right on during his Advanced SEO session. He drove home the fact many people believe SEO to be about playing games and tricking search engines, when in reality it’s more about creating valuable content and ensuring it’s in position to be found. This is a belief that we have long held and used to benefit our clients.

What did you learn?

The session Google Analytics: “Must Know” Features (Google’s Joshua Knox) reaffirmed how important it is to stay on top of the new developments like the new Google Adwords Search Funnel Reporting. It is clear Google is working on ways to break down the “last click” mentality that exists in online marketing, where only the last click gets credit for a conversion/sale; also, measure and monitor the whole visitor/customer experience.

Jenn Barber (Interactive Media Strategist)

Highlight of the day?

I loved how Jack Myers, Founder of M.E.D.I.Advisory Group, started the day with a vision for 2020: It’s hard to motivate a crowd to think “innovation” at 8:30AM, but Jack did a great job by defining the issues that face each of us today as agencies, marketers, and media companies. Today, companies spend somewhere between 0 and 30% of their operating budget on innovation with most woefully falling below 5%. When asked why not more, companies answer that it’s all we can afford. Jack answers that to be around in the future, you can’t afford not to.

What did you learn?

How to answer a popular question from our clients: “How do we decide which marketing channels to invest in?” thanks to the Marketing Convergence-Are You Ready? session with Warren Raisch of Digitaria. Answer: Start with the most measurable medium first to more easily see and report early successes.

So what do you measure? You measure 3 things – your Brand (image and reputation), Direct (Lead generation and sales conversions), and Social Activity (Customer Engagement). Most importantly, measure from a holistic point of view and don’t just jump to conclusions.

The team came back from Interactive Day San Diego energized and informed. Moreover, we brought some great information to help our clients and new customers succeed online. If you are a Facebook member you can check out the recaps and notes from the day  on the Facebook event page. You can check out the twitter stream from the day by searching for #IDSD. In addition, SiteLab has put together a one pager that has key resources from the day as well. If you would like a copy, use the contact me form and put #IDSD in the address section and we will send it to you in an email.

Posted in Industry News, Mobile Marketing, Search Marketing Today, SiteLab News & Events | No Comments »

1. When I first land on my page, what is the first thing I notice?
2. Is this what I want my visitors to notice?
3. Do I look reputable?
4. Have I tried to get testimonials on my page to make myself look more reputable?
5. How many links do I have that take potential customers/visitors away from my page?
6. Have I reduced the number of links away from the page as much as I possibly could but still provided enough information for the user to complete the main goal of the page?
7. Have I provided my visitor with content relevant enough to the search they performed or ad they clicked on?
8. Will the visitor have a reason to go back and revise their search?
9. Am I using stock images on my landing page?
10. Is it possible for me to use real product images or real people instead of these stock images?
11. What are my images saying to the visitor?
12. Are the pictures helping paint a better picture of my product, brand or service?
13. What is the main goal of the landing page?
14. Have I made it as easy as possible for people to complete this goal?
15. Have I removed all unnecessary steps in my sign up process or form?
16. Have I asked for too much information before providing them with enough information about my product?
17. If I am collecting credit card information, have I used a digital certificate or privacy seal such as Verisign or Trust-e?
18. What else have I done to make the visitor feel safe when going through a check out process?
19. Have I used short enough sentences in my copy to keep my reader interested?
20. Have I used bullets to highlight benefits?
21. Is it easy to find the main call to action?
22. Is my call to action big enough?
23. If you closed your eyes and opened them again, would your eye be drawn to it?
24. Is my page easily scanned?
25. Have I done the best job possible of showing why my product or service is better than the competition?

And don’t forget, the most important question of all….”Have I Consulted an Expert?”  No matter how many tips we give, there’s no substitute for experience!

Posted in Search Marketing Today | 2 Comments »

We recently had a unique and enlightening look at the power of the title tag for acquiring organic traffic (Case study below).  As a marketing agency focused on search and SEO, we are acutely aware of the need to ensure targeted keywords are used in a web page’s title tag.  The philosophy we preach to clients revolves around the dual audiences of SEO.

On the surface, SEO is about getting high rankings, so that in turn you get increased organic search traffic (unpaid traffic from the search engines).  However, an often overlooked element in this equation is that tags written for SEO purposes (title tags for instance), in select cases, are presented to users.  The most prominent example of this is on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs), where a ranked web page’s title tag is presented to a user in a set of search results.  This is the blue text that a searcher actually clicks on to go to a particular site which is ranked in the SERP.

Traditionally, many SEOs have attempted to simply stuff this tag with unattractive copy primarily to influence search engines into interpreting a page’s content in a particular way.  On the other end of the spectrum, marketing personnel use this tag to present some sort of marketing message, with little regard for keyword usage or describing the page accurately.  To achieve maximum results, it is absolutely essential to find a compromise between the two, where search engines can determine the true relevance of a page AND the tag is appealing to human searchers to encourage clicks from SERPs.  Without getting the clicks, organic traffic will not increase.  Without giving search engines descriptive text in the title tag, a site will not rank high in SERPs to have a chance to get clicks.

To illustrate this point, a client recently accidently deleted part of the title tag on their most trafficked webpage.  The title tag was chopped to only have the website’s brand name, without any descriptive text.  For example, for illustration purposes only, let’s say the title tag of the highest trafficked page on sitelab.com had a title tag of  ”Interactive Marketing Agency – SiteLab”.  What happened is that the first part was chopped off, so that the title tag reads “- SiteLab”.  This title tag stayed like this for about 1 month.  The site maintained it’s #1 ranking in SERPs for its primary keyword throughout, but instead of having a descriptive title for people to click on in SERPs, the title tag simply had the name of the website, which didn’t relate directly the targeted keyword.  The following graph illustrates what happened to their organic search traffic to this page (keep in mind this page was still ranked #1 in SERPs, but it’s title tag accidently became much less descriptive and attractive to searchers, despite it’s #1 ranking).

Pageviews to Landing Page (In Organic Search Traffic Segment):

Keyword Traffic for Targeted Keyword (#1 Ranking maintained throughout, poor title tag while traffic depressed):

As can be seen from the above graph, organic search traffic returned immediately when the title tag was updated in Google’s index.  Long tail rankings also returned contributing some increased traffic, but the majority of this lift is due to capturing a greater percentage of organic search clicks for the top priority targeted keywords.  This demonstrates that not only is it essential to appeal to search engines with the title tag, but also to human searchers who have to decide between search listings based solely on one line of text (in the title tag).

Posted in Search Marketing Today, SiteLab Clients | No Comments »

From time to time it’s useful to update yourself on the search market share of the major search engines.  Especially with the recent release of a brand new search engine (Bing) this is an opportune time to check in.

Today comScore released December 2009 search engine rankings.  The rankings showed Google and Bing moving up slightly, while Yahoo, Ask and AOL lost some market share.  Considering the relatively slow shifting of market share for major search engines, Microsoft’s Bing search engine showed quite impressive performance.  This search engine still maintains a robust TV advertising campaign, which is certainly contributing to its fine performance.  Google’s performance is also quite impressive considering that its share of overall searches continues to grow despite its absolute dominance in market share, registering a share of 65.7%.  To continue growing that number over time demonstrates Google’s powerful on the search marketplace.

This also seems to suggest that Bing is not taking market share from Google, but rather from Yahoo, Ask and AOL.  Of course, with the upcoming merging of Yahoo and Bing search results, this is not where Bing would ideally like to make gains.

Another key finding of this report is the continuing growth of search.  Overall searches were up 2% at a time when search engines have increasingly been questioned about their overall position in the online marketplace.  Some have theorized that social media sites are becoming more of the de facto gateway for users to the internet (much like portal sites were before search engines), taking away this position from search engines.  However, to date, usage of both does not seem mutually exclusive.

Posted in Industry News, Search Marketing Today, SiteLab News & Events | No Comments »