Watching the Web measurement companies trying to keep pace with changing audience habits on the internet is a bit like watching the credit rating agencies attempting to keep up with the latest trends in sub-prime mortgages: by the time the score-keepers work it out, the rest of the world has pretty much figured out what’s going on.
comScore’s latest stab at defining the internet search market is of interest nonetheless. It has changed its methodology to reflect the fact that many searches these days originate on affiliate sites, not the main search engines themselves, and that internet users often carry out different types of search for the same query by clicking on the "web", "images", "news" and other tabs – something known as "cross-channel search." It has also started to include results for search queries on "vertical" sites like eBay and Amazon. These are the highlights:
Google’s dominance is even more pronounced. Thanks to its dominance of the affiliate business, Google’s share in July of what comScore calls the "core" US search market was 20 per cent higher than a year before: Yahoo’s share had fallen by a similar degree (For the record, comScore gives Google a 55.2 per cent market share, Yahoo 23.5 per cent and Microsoft 12.3 per cent.) A Yahoo spokeswoman says the company turned its attention away from the affiliate business during Project Panama but is now fighting hard for alliances again.
The rise of MySpace: The number of searches conducted through Fox’s network of websites has now reached nearly 50 per cent of the number seen on Microsoft.
Ecommerce and classifieds: More searches are carried out on eBay than on fourth-placed search engine Ask.com. That creates both an opportunity and a dilemna for eBay: is the best way to monetise all those searches simply to return product listings, or to attach adverts as well that generate leads for other merchants – though at the risk of alienating its core users? Meanwhile, classifieds service Craigslist saw its query volumes grow faster than any of the other big sites in July, rising nearly 9 per cent from a year before and accounting for 40 per cent as many searches as eBay.
