Nielsen Search Share Ratings… what do your stats say?

Clive Lobo

Adam GreenNielson released their NetRatings report for August 2007 with no big suprises. The top search providers were ranked by total searches in the following manner.

– Google: 4,199,495 searches, 53.6% market share

– Yahoo!: 1,561,903 searches, 19.9% market share

– MSN/Live: 1,011,393 searches, 12.9% market share

I decided to dig a little deeper into the stats and metrics of our own clients to see how the market share compares to the traffic source data we collect. Why? Simply because my hunch is that Google brings in more traffic than 53% and I agree with Rand at SEOMoz.org that Google’s market share is probably closer to 70%.

So… here were my findings:

I took a snap shot of 10 clients, all running Google Analytics. I tried to use a variety of business’ representing various industry types and business sizes (mostly small to medium size). I also tried to use a mix of service based industries and product based industries. Lastly, given that Nielsen was reporting statistics for August, I used the same date range.

Google: 85.20

Yahoo: 7.23

MSN/Live: 5.76

According to our clients stats, Google’s market share is higher that Nielsen’s 53% and higher than my estimated 70%… Now, I know this isn’t statistically relevant but it does make for an interesting blog post.

I would like to hear your thoughts on this, does your site or clients sites show the same statistics?

Clive Lobo

Spark’s resident boss man, Clive possesses the very nature of an entrepreneurial spirit.

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