MSN Live to become 4th largest search engine in UK?

[tamecrow]

Just looking to find out everyone's opinion on this. A combination of MSN's (comparatively unsuccessful) rebranding as Live, and Ask's extensive UK offline advertising over the past year or two appears to have had quite an effect. I was digging around looking at some statistics today (I tend to do that...) and it seems that we may well see Ask overtake MSN Live as the UK's third search engine before long.

Take some stats from one year ago, for example (courtesy of Hitwise's Heather Hopkins). They show Google enjoying a 79.38% market share (up from 75.3% two years earlier), Yahoo enjoying a much unchanged 7.72%, and MSN + Live with a combined 5.28%. In comparison, little ol' Ask is creeping up with 4.87%. It's worth noting, however, that Ask enjoyed 5.45% market share two years previous, but that MSN's market share has dropped even more dramatically (from 7.61%) since the rebrand.

Some stats from March 2008 are shown in a somewhat different light. Google.co.uk's market share is 73.80%, but rises to 87.53% when Google.com is included (Were the two aggregated in last year's study? Come on, Hitwise - back to basics!). However, MSN/Live is/are nowhere to be seen. Yahoo comes in second/third with 2.91% and Ask is frighteningly close behind on 2.77%.

So, what do you reckon, UK SEO-ers? Do you already consider Ask when optimising your website(s)? Will this study change the way you view Ask and MSN/Live? What do you predict will happen in future months?

[incrediblehelp]

I dont do much in the UK any longer, but I would not doubt what your saying.

[ctabuk]

Moved at posters request. I do not doubt it either. But frankly ASK's results are way out of date - I still get loads of hits and I have always been a fan of Teoma sites. But they need to get their act together to affect Google.

[Clarrie]

Originally Posted by tamecrow

Just looking to find out everyone's opinion on this. A combination of MSN's (comparatively unsuccessful) rebranding as Live, and Ask's extensive UK offline advertising over the past year or two appears to have had quite an effect. I was digging around looking at some statistics today (I tend to do that...) and it seems that we may well see Ask overtake MSN Live as the UK's third search engine before long.

Take some stats from one year ago, for example (courtesy of Hitwise's Heather Hopkins). They show Google enjoying a 79.38% market share (up from 75.3% two years earlier), Yahoo enjoying a much unchanged 7.72%, and MSN + Live with a combined 5.28%. In comparison, little ol' Ask is creeping up with 4.87%. It's worth noting, however, that Ask enjoyed 5.45% market share two years previous, but that MSN's market share has dropped even more dramatically (from 7.61%) since the rebrand.

Some stats from March 2008 are shown in a somewhat different light. Google.co.uk's market share is 73.80%, but rises to 87.53% when Google.com is included (Were the two aggregated in last year's study? Come on, Hitwise - back to basics!). However, MSN/Live is/are nowhere to be seen. Yahoo comes in second/third with 2.91% and Ask is frighteningly close behind on 2.77%.

So, what do you reckon, UK SEO-ers? Do you already consider Ask when optimising your website(s)? Will this study change the way you view Ask and MSN/Live? What do you predict will happen in future months?

These most recent Hitwise stats don't tally with my perceived experience over the last year. My impression has been that Google has been continuing to gain ground at the expense of all the others, and I haven't seen Ask making any noticeable showing at all.

And this is born out by a quick check on some stats. I've just pulled last month's stats for 10 sites: Almost by chance these were 5 x B2B and 5 x B2C sites.

Overall the stats are: Google 83.52%, Yahoo 8.09%, Live / MSN 7.12%, Ask 1.28%.

Splitting these into B2B and B2C shows an interesting difference:

B2B: Google 88.16%, Yahoo 5.02%, Live / MSN 6.82%, Ask 0.00%.

B2C: Google 82.91%, Yahoo 8.49%, Live / MSN 7.16%, Ask 1.44%.

The mathematicians amongst will of course see that the B2C sites here have a lot more traffic than the B2B set.

The last time I did this exercise (probably about a year ago) Google had 79% overall, and the others were all about 1% higher.

From an SEO standpoint, over the last few years we have focused on Google (that's what our clients really want), but we don't neglect Yahoo and MSN and find we also do pretty well with them at the same time.

And no, we don't really bother to make any effort for Ask. Sorry.

[tamecrow]

Originally Posted by Clarrie

These most recent Hitwise stats don't tally with my perceived experience over the last year. My impression has been that Google has been continuing to gain ground at the expense of all the others, and I haven't seen Ask making any noticeable showing at all.

...

Overall the stats are: Google 83.52%, Yahoo 8.09%, Live / MSN 7.12%, Ask 1.28%.

Very interesting stats, but, of course, these results will be naturally skewed by the following:-

Originally Posted by Clarrie

And no, we don't really bother to make any effort for Ask. Sorry.

Of course, if we don't target traffic from a particular search engine, we're unlikely to get it. Is there anyone here who's based in the UK and actively SEOs for Ask? It'd be really interesting to see the contrasting statistics between you and Clarrie and to see what kind of a difference it makes.

[inertia]

Hi Tamecrow,

I started a similar thread about 6 months ago after seeing the onslaught of Ask ads on the TV:

Ask UK. Are they on the up?

I did predict a boost in Ask traffic but i haven't seen any changes to my sites stats and to be honest i still don't give Ask a second thought. Ive had one hit from Ask in the last 3 months despite some OK positions.

Looking at the SERPs i would say that there are some big differences in their algo compared to the major 3. They have to be content orientated more than link orientated. I still don't have the little binocular feature on my site!?? That might be affecting my traffic from them. They never seam to offer my home page in the results. It always seams to be an obscure page which is totally unrelated and this looks like a trend across the SERPs.

From the thread above i came to the conclusion that they don't index quickly enough. Maybe they can take some traffic from Yahoo and MSN but unless they keep hammering the offline advertising they wont sustain it.