Google’s Search Market Share?
Lots of people speculate that Google has about 60% search market share. It seems to me that this is totally wrong — seems to me they have well above 90%. I pulled up Google Analytics for all eight of the sites that I have it installed on and did a quick query to see what percentage of people hit my sites from Google vs. other search engines. Take a look:
| blog.bestseattlebars.com | 97.5% |
| helpd.org | 100% |
| alexloddengaard.com | 99.0% |
| bestseattlebars.com | 73.8% |
| cellarspot.com | 100% |
| dirtyinq.com | 100% |
| huskysnowboardteam.com | 50% |
| timedex.org | 100% |
Small sample size/poor statistical analysis? Yes. 60% search market share? No way.
What do you think?
10 Comments so far
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Post your sample sizes and we’ll do the numbers.
I specifically didn’t post the sample sizes because some of those sites technically aren’t mine. I can tell you that some of those sites get around 1000 uniques a month and others get about 50 uniques a month.
Windows Live search gets a huge boost out of being the default setting in IE7, which is an intentional confusion further pushed by just how similar the color scheme and layout is to Google’s.
I bet Google Analytics on those sites also tells you that Firefox has great market share.
Roughly, your sample is biased towards American interests, a young audience (which likely has Firefox installed and uses Gmail), and has a limited audience (if 1000 uniques is the most trafficked site in the list).
Between people who use IE, never bother to change their homepage from MSN (this is a huge number if you talk to people at Microsoft); people who use Yahoo because they use Yahoo Mail, etc.; and the completely different numbers in terms of international search market share, I think 60% is quite believable.
Sean, most of my sites do have a majority of Firefox users, which proves Sunil’s point. However, I have seen some friends’ analytics that show IE being as commonly used as Firefox.
Sunil, agreed that this is a poor statistical analysis. I think many of the points you and Clint have raised are valid, but I still think 60% is a big undershot. I know plenty of people that use Internet Explorer and use Google. Perhaps my 90% claim is high, but I have a strong, gut-level instinct that 60% is way too low. Regardless, thank for the input!
What’s interesting is that even if Google has “only” a 60% market share, there still isn’t a whole lot of competition between search engines; people who us Google stick with Google, and people who use Yahoo stick with Yahoo. It seems to me that very few people actively search for better search engines.
Good point, jsalvati. The search industry is much different than say the cell phone industry in that regard. Still, I don’t believe 60%. Thanks for the comment!
Dude,
You need to consider that your demographic is entirely google bias. You are a software engineer.
Yeah I know I know. Sunil and Clint shined light on this bias as well. I’m still sticking with my gut-level intuition of 60% being too little, but I’ll definitely disagree with my previous claim of over 90%.
Thanks for the comment, CW.