The following was written by Andrew Goodman

Which Search Engine Drives The Most Traffic To Business Sites?

Which search engine has the biggest share of monthly searches? That was the sort of question panelists from web measurement agencies attempted to shed light on in the Search Landscape Panel at Search Engine Strategies New York, as I reported in a recent guest article for SearchDay.

(A similar panel with Canadian stats will be happening this week at Search Engine Strategies Toronto.)

Another -- slightly different -- question is: which search engine refers the most traffic to business websites? Studies deriving from referral logs are the best way of answering this question. Web metrics companies like WebSideStory release periodic news releases with stats of this nature -- basically aggregated stats from all of their clients' site stats, as opposed to panel-based measurements of online user behavior. These can help to provide an extra data point when considering the extent of Google's dominance.

Dan Shapero of Net Applications recently passed along March numbers from his company's Hitslink stats application. It provides aggregated statistics from 40,000+ URL's on things like browser usage and search referrals.

The numbers are a bit unusually presented. Global stats are included but are a small percentage of the total, so for example "Google UK" doesn't make the top six just because Net Applications doesn't have a huge global customer base, and those customers are generating relatively little traffic. In addition, the stats don't distinguish between paid and unpaid referrals. But "content targeting" referrals are not included, just search.

All that being said, this set of numbers confirms the "Google Domination Factor":

Google 44.5%
Yahoo 17.0%
MSN 10.9%
AOL 3.2%
Dogpile 0.8%
Ask Jeeves 0.9%

Remember, there could be dozens of others on the list all around 0.5% or less, many of them being global Google, MSN, AOL, and Yahoo sites as well as a couple hundred additional tiny niche referrers. So this doesn't mean Ask Jeeves' US-based market share is 0.9%, but it does seem to mean that in the U.S., Google refers 45X more traffic to web pages that matter than Ask Jeeves does.

Another thing this could mean is that Yahoo refers a lot of traffic to larger companies who are participating in its pay-per-click or paid inclusion programs, but these same companies are not Hitslink clients. Intuitively I feel this is the case. I have no proof that Hitslink skews towards the smaller marketer, but I get the feeling it does at least exclude most of the Fortune 1000 companies who may be seeing higher CTR's from Yahoo by virtue of taking advantage of paid inclusion and PPC. That doesn't mean this is bad data -- it may mean that it's very realistic data for SME's to look at. I believe many assume Yahoo "typically" refers about as much traffic as Google. Of course many companies are atypical, but the most typical SME pattern is in fact to see the Google - Yahoo split in terms of search referrals as somewhere around 65-35. For the facts as they relate to your company, all you need to do is to look at referral logfile data over the past 12 months to see if there is a pattern. Obviously that pattern will depend heavily on how much you are spending on paid traffic.

There were few changes in the Hitslink data from February to March, but Google did gain a bit of ground at MSN's expense, which runs counter to some of the panel-based behavioral studies which have suggested MSN Search growing a bit lately at AOL's expense. Maybe so, if you watch a panel go about its daily business, but not so if you look at traffic that's actually clicking through to client sites in any tangible way.

The breakdown of Hitslink clients is as follows:

Commerce sites: 43%
Corporate sites: 18%
Content sites: 10%
Other (gov, org, SEM companies, and more): 29%

76% of Hitslink's customers use pay-per-click programs to drive traffic.

And why Google is aproximately 100 time more popular here in Finland, European Union as the others search engines ? Because, Google can use Scandinavic letters right way. The others can't do this. They use only English alphabets. So area the things here. Matti

Well, every day and every hour, most visitors to our website at http://www.soundscapehifi.com are from Google. Below is an example of what our site meter shows 1 minute ago, 1st page. The next pages are still dominated 90% by Google which can search images, translate, easy to use, nice interface, etc. Of course, we'd still like to be in all search engines.

1 http://www.google.it/search?q=...nac 82&hl=it&lr=&start=10&sa=N
2 http://www.google.com/search?h...r=&q=Kontrapunkt C&btnG=Search
3 unknown
4 http://www.soundscapehifi.com
5 unknown
6 http://www.audiolijn.nl/
7 http://www.audiolijn.nl/Leben/...sca...nd%20Music.htm
8 http://images.google.de/imgres...=ht...dscapehifi.com
9 http://www.google.sk/search?q=...ere...&start=60&sa=N
10 http://www.google.fr/search?hl...ifi Enclosures aluminum&btnG=R
11 unknown
12 http://www.google.com/search?q...&oe...=firefox-a&rls
13 http://www.google.com/search?h... shelf racks wood&btnG=Hae&lr=
14 http://translate.google.com/tr...sea...mo%2BMerlin%26
15 http://search.yahoo.com/search...v1-&p=SCHROEDER elevator parts
16 http://images.google.com.sg/im...www...fi.com/lv.htm&
17 http://images.google.ru/imgres...=ht...dscapehifi.com
18 unknown
19 http://www.google.se/search?q=300b amp&hl=sv&lr=&start=80&sa=N
20 unknown

My experience is that once a site is optimized, and it ranks great in the top search engines and gets traffic from 30+ search engines, Google dominates enormously with 73% or so, followed by Yahoo with approx. 10% and MSN just a small 3.5%

This indicates to me that the real use of search engines is quite different from what those statistics show which include loads of sites that are not optimized.

One factor is though that Google is able to index many more pages in a site than most others. But the site does need a proper link structure to reach this point.

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Recognizing a website Visitor does not a buyer make....

We think it critical to evaluate a BtoB site's traffic for its ability to yield real leads. Prevailing market research, such as that from the CMO Council, identifies new customer Lead Generation as the primary objective for B2B sites.

Yet typically, less than 5% of B2B site traffic ever becomes an "actionable lead". Request information... complete a download... email... regsister for content... When an even more fractional conversion percentage is applied for a closed sale, the real ROI for driving traffic can become daunting - if not prohibitive.

We provide a technology enabling the identification of who B2B visitors are - without requiring any registration. This yields detailed business intelligence about these companies and executives, along with the search inquiry and the engine producing each Visitor. I'll briefly share some data on what we are seeing for the search engines being produced by this technology.

There is no question Google produces the most "actionable leads" for our clients. We see more named company information as leads from Google traffic than from all the other SEs combined.

This perhaps can be correllated directly with their market share in the at-work search - as high as 82% according to some studies, such as that on B2B search from Marketing Sherpa. In total, by adding Yahoo and MSN (or what was Overture) to this mix, over 95% of at-work searches are conducted from these the "big three".

In evaluating some of the client data for April - we see the following for Visitor leads amongst the big three: - MSN at 10%, Yahoo at 17%, and Google at 72%.

This is only a sample of data, but further evidences the power of Google amongst the at-work BtoB audience.

C. Jeffers
www.MeridianDigitalMarketing.com
www.Webiste-Leads.com

To put the larger amount of google traffic into perspective.

I get more traffic from a number 11 or 12 position on google than I do for a #1 position on Yahoo and MSN combined.

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The Merchant Account Blog | The Ecommerce Blog

Traditionally Google has always sent a large percentage more users to my site. But I've seen these numbers making drastic changes over the last 6 months or so. I have a few pages that are all now ranked number one or two on most of the search engines so my comparison is actually pretty equal and doesn't take into affect the difference higher ranking would make from one engine to another.

You must also take into consideration my hits from Google have not diminished in any way, in fact they have also increased over this period. From what I see, MSN and Yahoo!'s reconfiguration of their search results have drastically improved my site's recognition on the Internet.

Here's my numbers from last week (April 24th. to 30th. 2005)
10,677 msn.com
9,955 google.com
9,942 yahoo.com
705 ask.com
613 aol.com

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I started an Internet business so I could work normal hours...

what happened?

Relying on reported use of search engines is highly unreliable. Respondents will

1. Often use the first brand name they can think of, or
2. Use the brand name that they think will elicit the greatest approval.

Contrast ownership of prestige cars with aspiration.

The only way to establish a decent figure is to measure log files of B2B - not B2C - sites. In my experience Yahoo does relatively better on B2B searches and MSN relatively worse. However, from the campaigns I'm running Google still dominates - but not to the extent of B2C.

David Burdon

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Simply Clicks | SEO | SEO Training| Pay Per Click Advertising | Search Engine Powered Marketing

What does it matter which search engine brings in the most hits?

It matters which brings in the most conversions, I recently busted a gut to get one of my sites out of oblivion and into the top 5 of google for my prime keyword.

after much trial and error I got consistant success and now average around 4.

did I get more traffic, yeah oodles
did I get more sales, nada if anything it looked as if I went backwards.

So traffic doesnt count, it may make you feel all nice and fuzzy, and you can show your clients how well they are doing.

but its meaningless without sales.

So does anyone have any figures on where the most Conversions/sales come from?

Here's some statistics that I looked up.
Traffic%:
Google: 71%
MSN: 11%
Yahoo: 7%
AOL: 4%
Other: 7%

Conversion%:
Google: 70%
MSN: 15%
Yahoo: 7%
AOL: 5%
Other: 3%

Traffic = Sales

Don't ask for numbers, but its based on enough visitors for this to be pretty solid. Also, this is all from organic traffic.

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The Merchant Account Blog | The Ecommerce Blog

Well,.. let me put it like this: If you get 10% from Google and 70% from Yahoo and MSN,. then there is a lot of room for receiving a lot more visitors.

It´s not the search engine that sells your product, it is the site that does. If your prime keyword phrase doesn't result in sales then either your site doesn't sell very well, or your prime keyword isn't what you thought it was,. :)

Often the most popular phrases are the most generic phrases and have very low conversion rates.

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Another factor might be Google's popularity among college students, who're more likely to be avid online purchasers than older or younger audiences. Among college students, I suspect Google is considered to be "cooler" than the other search engines, with MSNSearch coming off as too corporate and Yahoo Search as too stodgy.

Any research out there on search engine preferences by age group or other demographics?

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Steve
scallihan@thedoghousemail.com
Fine Art Prints & Posters

True, it is meaningless without sales.

But you do get more eyeballs, and that's what advertising is all about anyway.

Then it's up to one's sales team, literature, relevancy, etc. to keep the interest, and hopefully start the sale process. Search engines just bring potential clients to one's doorstep, and it's up to the business to make them come in.

So yes, it's meaningless, if what they find after their search is also meaningless to them. So consider Google for example as just the beginning. If it still doesn't work, there is a problem somewhere.

Frankly, it's easy to get listed in search engines, what's more important is the content of a website with respect to its target market.

Consider the past VCR's and other electronic equipment that got so complicated with so many buttons that the "older" audience and very young audience was unable to operate it. The industry moved away from the buttons and complicated use of equipment and now makes simple to use stuff again.

Google is extremely easy to use so I doubt that the older and very young audience prefer other search engines. I hear kids of 11 years old talking about googling their friends.

Yahoo for example is more likely to be of interest of students because of all the games and stuff they have.

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