.:
.:
.:
.:
.:
.:
.:
.:
.:
.:
.:
.:
.:
.:
|
 |
|
Survey of the Internet
Nielsen//NetRatings is one of the leading internet and digital media audience information and analysis services. NetRatings provides worldwide web site ratings based on a sample of over 225,000 individuals in 26 countries. These web surfers have real-time meters on their computers which monitor the sites they visit. This metered information is compiled to produce NetRatings results.
Audience Reach
The chart below shows the most popular search sites in the United States, as based on audience reach for January 2003. Audience reach is the percentage of US home and work internet users estimated to have searched on each site at least once during the month through a web browser or some other "online" means. For January 2003, there were an estimated 134 million active at home and at work internet users in the US.
Only "search specific" traffic is counted toward the figures below. This means that only visits deemed to be search-related were counted in the totals. That helps prevent non-search traffic at portals (such as visits to get email) from polluting the data.
A panel of more than 60,000 home and work surfers was measured to estimate these figures. Because a web surfer may visit more than one service, the combined totals exceed 100 percent.
US Digital Media Universe Audience Reach
Home & Work Users, January 2003
KEY: GG=Google, YH=Yahoo, MSN=MSN, AOL=AOL, AJ=Ask Jeeves,
OVR=Overture (GoTo), IS=InfoSpace, NS=Netscape, AV=AltaVista,
LY=Lycos, ELINK=EarthLink.com, LS=LookSmart,
|
Be aware that some services listed may have greater reach than the chart reflects. For instance, links from Overture appear on search results pages at Yahoo, MSN and Lycos, to name only a few of Overture's partners. However, the chart only shows people who actually visited Overture itself or who visited a site "powered" by Overture, where the overture.com domain shows in the browser address window, after a search is performed. Go.com is an example of this.
The same is true for some other services. For example, those viewing Google results at Yahoo or Netscape are not counted in Google's traffic. Similarly, those viewing LookSmart results at MSN Search do not count into LookSmart's traffic.
Wondering where some familiar names are, such as AllTheWeb or the Open Directory? These are services that didn't get enough traffic to make it into the top list. They receive less audience share than the last service shown on the chart. As for Teoma, its traffic is included in that for parent company Ask Jeeves.
Figures for InfoSpace reflect search traffic from the four major meta search sites that it either owns or operates: Dogpile, Excite, WebCrawler and MetaCrawler, according to InfoSpace.
Not shown on the chart above are searches conducted through Xupiter.com (2.6 precent audience share), 1stblaze.com (2.5 percent) or Goclick.com (1.3 percent). These services were included in data for the top 15 search destinations sent from NetRatings for January 2003, sites that have the highest unique audience. However, they are not what Search Engine Watch considers to be mainstream or traditional search engines.
Here's audience reach over the past few months, for the sites listed above with an audience reach of 5 percent or higher:
KEY: As above
Here's audience reach over the past few months, for the sites listed above with an audience reach of below 5 percent:
KEY: As above
|
Time Spent On Site
The audience reach charts above reflect unique visits to the various search engines, not the overall volume of search activity. For example, a person might visit Yahoo only once in a given month and would be counted toward Yahoo's share. The same person might also visit Google every day in the same month and conduct several searches per day at Google. Despite this, the person would still count only once in the Google figure above, which shows the percent of "unique visitors" in a given month that came to the site.
Because of this, the average time spent by visitors in a given month can be a useful way to determine which sites may be more popular, when it comes to search. The next chart shows the average number of minutes spent per visitor at each site, in January 2003, on search-specific activity. Services with more than 2 minute of search activity in the month are listed, with the exception of Xupiter.com (which averaged 5.7 minutes):
Average Minutes Spent Searching Per Visitor
Home & Work Users, January 2003
KEY: As above
|
New Measuring System & AOL
The old measuring system used by NetRatings prior to October 2002 monitored only visits to web sites made through standard browsers such as Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator. However, people may access web sites via other means, such as through a browser built into a cellular phone, via an instant messaging application or through specialized software. Under the new NetRatings system, the entire "digital media universe" is supposed to be included, not just browser activity.
In terms of search, the new system made little difference except with AOL. AOL's audience reach stayed about the same, but the time those visitors spent searching dramatically increased.
Throughout most of 2002, AOL typically had between 10 to 11 minutes of search activity per visitor. In the new system that started for October 2002, the average minutes more than tripled. I'm following up with NetRatings to better understand why this may have happened.
The next chart estimates the total time spent searching by the digital media audience at each site listed above. It multiplies the number of visitors to each site by the average number of minutes each visitor is estimated to have spent at the site. The result shows the total number of hours spent by searchers at each site, for January 2002:
Total Search Hours
In Millions of Hours, January 2003
Comments & Questions
Luther E. Toney II
Citynetsearch.com
|
|
|
View all Packages
Professional Edition Package 1 Deep Promotion $1,500.00
Register your web site with over 400,000 search engines and directories.
2 submissions annually
Evaluate up to 15 pages of your site to determine search engine friendliness
We will develop 10 high quality door way pages designed on current search engine algorithms based on the top ten engines (hand submit).
You will be notified via email when we register your web site.
We will register up to 25 pages from your Url (Deep Promotion)
Click Here To Purchase!
Need Advice?
Click Here to find out more about our Custom Consulting Program!
|
|
|
|
