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Tag: Hitwise

  • Online Retail Is Ridiculously Strong This Year

    Online Retail Is Ridiculously Strong This Year

    Online spending in the U.S. reached an incredible new high on Cyber Monday, hitting $1.46 Billion for the day, according to comScore. This is the heaviest day of online spending in U.S. history, and follows a record Black Friday for e-commerce.

    $16.4 billion has been spent online, this holiday season so far (starting from the beginning of November), according to the firm. That’s a 16% increase from last year. Cyber Monday spending itself was up 17%.

    “Despite some news reports suggesting that Cyber Monday might be declining in importance, the day has once again set an online spending record at nearly $1.5 billion,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. “However, it is also clear that the holiday promotional period has begun even earlier this year, with strong online sales occurring on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday. Now, we shall see the extent to which continuing and attractive retailer promotions are able to boost sales for the remainder of the week.”

    Cyber Monday Spending

    The top product categories for growth on Cyber Monday, compared to last year, were Digital Content & Subscriptions, which grew by 28%, Consumer Electronics, which grew by 25%, Computer Hardware, which grew by 22%, Video Games, Consoles & Accessories, which grew by 18%, and Jewelry & Watches, which grew by 17%.

    Interestingly, close to half of dollars spent online at U.S. websites originated from work computers (47.1%), according to comScore. That’s actually down from last year. Buying at U.S. websites from international locations accounted for 5.7% of sales.

    “The term ‘Cyber Monday’ was coined by Shop.org in 2005 to refer to the significant jump in e-commerce spending that occurred following the Thanksgiving holiday weekend as consumers got back to sitting in front of computer screens at work,” said Fulgoni. “At the time and for several years afterward, Cyber Monday was often misconstrued as the heaviest online spending day of the year, when in fact it barely cracked the top ten days of the season. However, with the passage of time, the day grew in importance as a result of an increasing number of retailers offering very attractive deals on the day and extensive digital media coverage making sure that consumers were aware of them. As a result, Cyber Monday has assumed the mantle of top online spending day for the past two years – a trend we expect to hold once again in 2012.”

    Here’s a comparison of online spending for each week of the holiday season, for this year and the previous four:

    Holiday Shopping

    Experian Hitwise has put out some data on online retail traffic for Cyber Monday. According to them, traffic increased 11% year-over-year, and the top 500 retail sites received over 206.8 million total U.S. visits. For Black Friday, online retail traffic increased 7% versus 2011 as those sites received over 193.8 million total U.S. visits. On Thanksgiving Day, according to Experian Hitwise, online retail traffic increased 6% versus 2011 as those sites received over 192.5 million total US visits.

    “So far this past Holiday week of online traffic from Thanksgiving Day to Cyber Monday to retail sites is up 8% for 2012 vs. 2011,” a spokesperson for the firm tells WebProNews. “Amazon.com remained the top visited retail site on Cyber Monday while Walmart received the second most visits. BestBuy was the 3rd most visited site with Target and JC Penney rounding out the top five.”

    “Among the top 5 sites, Amazon saw the biggest year-over-year growth at 36%.Amazon.com was the top visited retail site on Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday,” he adds. “Walmart was the #2 site each of those days.”

    He also says consumer optimism is at an all-time high for this holiday weekend and retailers could see significant traffic gains for 2012 versus 2011.

    “Last year Cyber Monday claimed the prize as the busiest shopping day of the year, growing from 138 million online visits to 177 million total US visits to the top 500 Retail sites, a 29% growth comparing 2011 to 2010,” he says. “Last year, Cyber Monday, Black Friday and Thanksgiving were the top 3 Email Transaction days during the holiday season.”

    Online payments giant PayPal saw a 190% increase in global mobile payment volume on Cyber Monday, compared to the same day in 2011. That follows Black Friday, when PayPal saw its biggest mobile shopping day to date, and the company says it saw 44% more payment volume on Cyber Monday than Black Friday. PayPal saw 166% increase in the number of customers shopping with mobile devices on Cyber Monday 2012 as compared to last year. Shoppers in Houston, Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York made the most purchases through PayPal on Cyber Monday this year.

    Cyber Monday was pretty huge for Etsy too.

  • US Search Market: Google Down, Bing and Yahoo Up

    Experian Hitwise released its search market share numbers for the four weeks ending August 27.

    Key findings are as follows:

    • Google accounted for 65.09% of all U.S. searches conducted in the four weeks ending August 27, 2011.
    • Bing-powered search comprised 28.99% of searches for the month
    • Yahoo! Search and Bing receiving 15.89 percent and 13.10 percent, respectively.
    • The remaining 64 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis report accounted for 5.92 percent of U.S. searches.

    That last point really drives home just how hard it is to compete in the search market in the U.S. 64 engines together make up less than 6% and the top three are really the top 2 (I assume if you’re reading this, you’re familiar with the Yahoo/Bing deal).

    Hitwise search data

    Google is down by a percent, Bing-powered search is up by 3%. Yahoo specifically is up 5% and Bing specifically is up 1%.

    Another interesting finding is that longer search queries, classified as those averaging five to eight words or more, increased by 3% month-to-month.

    Hitwise search data

    I wonder if the increase in longer search queries is a testament to people getting better at searching or the search engines not delivering as well on the shorter ones.

  • Mashable Affected By Google’s Panda Update? Not Likely.

    Hitwise released some new data (we looked at the bigger picture here) obtained by Forbes, related to Google’s Panda Update. It has a list of sites that have experienced drastic changes in Google traffic since before the initial launch of the U.S. Panda update – loooking at patterns from the beginning of the year until 3 days ago.

    Most of the list looks pretty familiar, but we couldn’t help but notice that Mashable was on the list, registering a -40% hit in downstream traffic from Google in the U.S. At a quick glance, it would seem to indicate that Mashable was lumped in with sites like eHow, EzineArticles, and Associated Content. However, Mashable is a different breed of site, which makes us very skeptical that Google is actually looking at Mashable’s content in any different and significant way.

    The fact is that Mashable is a news site. Most of the sites affected negatively are more focused on evergreen content. News and evergreen content simply work in different ways when it comes to search. That’s not to say that Mashable doesn’t have evergreen content. It does. But when you’re primarily a news-oriented site, your search traffic is not always going to be consistent. We know. We’re in this business too.

    You can have a big hit in Google one day, then not as much the next. You can have a good week of lots of good news-based search traffic. Then not have as much luck the next. This can fluctuate all the time. I suspect this is more the reason Mashable is on that list, rather than the Panda update having a significantly negative impact on the site.

    Mashable almost certainly gets a lot more traffic from other sources (besides Google) than a lot of the other sites on the list do. Mashable undoubtedly gets tons of traffic from social sites like Facebook and Twitter, not to mention links from other news sites, as it’s one of the most prominent sites in the social media/tech news space. By nature, Mashable is much less dependent on Google for traffic than a site like eHow or EzineArticles (though these sites are making efforts to become less dependent on Google).

    The data Hitwise/Forbes has provided shows (allegedly) what percentage of outgoing Google traffic has been going to pages from the sites listed. As Jeff Bercovici of Forbes writes, “Hitwise looked at downstream traffic from Google — ie. what sites do users surf to next after visiting Google.com. In the first two weeks of January, 0.57 percent of those who departed Google next visited a site operated by Demand Media, the best known of the content farms.”

    As I’m still seeing Mashable consistently show up on the first page of Google results, I don’t imagine any significant loss is a permanent change, if the data is even accurate. It’s worth noting that in recent data from SearchMetrics, Mashable was one of the top post-Panda winners in the UK, with a 22.61% visibility increase.

  • Google Panda Update – A Broader View of U.S. Traffic Patterns

    Experian Hitwise has released some new Panda-related data (obtained by Forbes), casting a broader view of what some of the update’s victims’ search traffic is looking like since early in the year – before Panda’s first wave.

    There are some interesting findings here indeed. Forbes was kind enough to share a spreadsheet of the data, looking at U.S. weekly downstream traffic from Google.com to selected sites. The spreadsheet would appear to show the true top losers of the Panda update in the U.S.

    Hitwise Panda Data
    Click image to see larger version

    It’s worth noting that not all of the data here is necessarily representative of Panda – just Google traffic in general. Believe it or not, Panda is not the only thing that can come into play here.

    The thing that has everybody talking is the -40% hit Demand Media has taken in downstream traffic from Google in the U.S. Demand Media’s Answerbag took a -80% hit, LiveStrong took a -57% hit, and the company’s real bread and butter site, eHow, took a -29% hit. That’s from January 08 to April 23.

    The usual suspects are also included on the list. For the same time period, Articlebase, the top loser on this list, took a -83% hit, Suite101 took a -79% hit, Mahalo took a -78% hit, EzineArticles took a -77% hit, HubPages took a -67% hit, and Yahoo’s Associated Content took a -61% hit.

    Again, this is just up to three days ago from close to the beginning of the year. I wonder how the patterns will develop for these sites after another month or two.

    Also worth noting – Overstock.com is on the list at -32%. Just this week, the company announced that they are no longer in “Google’s Penalty Box”.

    Among the winners: Walmart, JC Penney (interesting considering recent events), Forbes, Whitepages, Etsy, eBay, YouTube (a discussion on whether this is justified here), YellowPages, and About.com.

    Taming the Panda

    If you are one of Panda’s victims, you’ve likely already been doing your fair share of site evaluation (and perhaps business model evaluation) and soul searching. There are many factors to consider when trying to get your site up to Google’s code for quality. Of course nobody knows exactly what that code is, but there are plenty of hints and starting points. We’ve looked at a lot of them here.

    SEO Jim Boykin wrote an interesting piece about Panda, with a bit of a history lesson, referencing Google’s “supplemental index,” which was heavily discussed about 5 years ago.

    “I believe that after they removed the ability to clearly see which pages are in the supplemental results, that they then went on a binge of putting way way more % of pages into this ‘Supplemental index’,” he says. “So something to understand today with Panda is that google was already pretty good at tossing the majority of everyone’s pages on their sites into the supplemental results. At least the Deep Pages, and the Pages with Little content, and the pages of dup content…”

    He goes on to talk about different signals Google has added to its algorithm since then, and looks at post Panda interviews with Google that we have looked at in the past (see all of our past Panda coverage here). Boykin’s lengthy article is worth a read, but he concludes that the biggest question site-owners should be asking themselves (to avoid Panda Hell) is: “How do I get people to not quickly go back to the same google search?”

    The answer, I would say, is to provide as much relevant information as possible to answer the questions users are likely seeking the answers to. Of course you have to consider that Google has a total of over 200 different factors it’s looking at.

  • Concerning Bing’s More-Accurate-Than-Google Search Results

    It’s pretty clear that Experian Hitwise has a comfortable familiarity with Tom Smykowski’s “Jump to Conclusions” mat, at least in regards to comparing search result accuracy with Google and Bing.  It’s either that or perhaps the “online competitive intelligence service” needs another lesson in correlation and causation.

    Do you think Bing has better search results than Google? Tell us what you think. 

    In a recent report discussing Bing’s improved market share — something the tech journalism sector is going wild about, but if I’m not mistaken, 68 percent is far greater than 27.4 — Experian Hitwise made the bold statement that, because Bing users click search engine results 81.54 percent of the time, compared to 65.58 percent for Google users, Bing’s results are more accurate than Google’s.

    WebProNewsWho has better results: Bing or Google?3 hours ago 2 likes 11 comments

    Easily embed social conversations

    Experian Hitwise found that Bing’s market share rose from 10.60% in December to  12.81% in January. As we pointed out in a previous post, Bing didn’t simply steal users away from its partner Yahoo, either. 

    Of course, considering the spat between Google and Bing, and Bing’s use of at least a small percentage of Google’s search engine results, it adds more skepticism to Hitwise’s claim.

    As many of you know, the principle idea in “correlation does not equal causation” is one thing does not necessarily cause another, or in the case of Google and Bing’s search result accuracy, one piece of data (more Bing users click the results) does not make bold conclusions true (Bing’s results are more accurate).

    Jump to Conclusions Mat
    Image courtesy

    Taken at face value, it’s easy to conclude Bing’s results are 16 percent more accurate, but then, when you consider so many more people are using Google to conduct Internet searches, the margin for non-clicks for any number of reasons — incorrect spelling, refining the original search query — is a lot larger than Bing’s.

    Furthermore, what is the average experience level of Bing users?  If Bing users are comprised predominantly of “Internet noobs,” for lack of a better term, would they not be more inclined to click the first result they saw, even if it was relevant or not? If Google’s users are “more experienced,” would they not be more selective about which results they clicked?

    And if that’s the case, doesn’t that mean the overall quality of search results — across the board, not just with Google — need to be improved?

    As for Google’s results being less accurate than Bing’s, before making such a claim, much more research is needed: an extensive, side-to-side comparison of multiple queries, not just reliance on how frequently the results were clicked.  Another obvious aspect to consider is the user’s experience level.  An Internet veteran will not click everything they see; whereas an Internet novice using Bing because they liked their witty “search overload” commercials is not as selective.

    In regards to Hitwise’s conclusion, as told via Internet chat lingo, the following statement comes to mind:  More clicks != better quality of results. 

    You need more data to make such a profound conclusion.

    Agree? Disagree? Let us know in the comments.

  • Matt Cutts Responds To Hitwise

    Whether or not Bing’s search results are more accurate than Google’s isn’t up for discussion here.  Aside from the inherent sampling errors when comparing the actions of either group — a 65 percent market share and a 27 percent market share are not equal sample sizes, leading to large amounts of variability — Hitwise’s conclusion seemed more like wishful thinking.

    Matt Cutts Talks About Google's Lastest Web Spam EffortsAnd now, the Googler Supreme, Matt Cutts, has thrown his two cents into the fray.  Needless to say, he didn’t agree with Hitwise’s “conclusion” either. 

    In his Google Buzz post, Cutts asks:

    Are you able to determine whether the user clicked on a search result vs. just left the search engine to go to another site? There’s a difference between an abandoned search and clicking on a search result, but both result in the user searching and then going to a different site. By Hitwise’s definition, wouldn’t doing a query on Bing and then going to Google or Yahoo count as a "successful search" on Bing?

    Not only that, but when asked, Hitwise couldn’t even define what they considered a successful search:

    Hitwise later confirmed to me that they don’t know whether the user actually clicked on a search result or just went to a completely unrelated site. Given all that, I’m surprised to see Hitwise is still pushing this metric and still calling it "search success rate."

    So here comes Hitwise, armed with incomplete data that’s rife with variability biases, and they can’t even define what they consider a successful search engine query?  If that’s the case, their entire “Bing is more accurate than Google” thesis should be thrown out the window.

    Now, this is not an attack on Bing.  If you use Microsoft’s search engine and you like the results it gives, more power to you.  That doesn’t mean, however, Hitwise should be given a free pass when they deliver erroneous conclusions that ignore each engine’s market share.

    Are Bing’s results more accurate than Google’s?  I really don’t know and without extensive, side-by-side comparisons of numerous queries performed by equal-sized groups, neither do the rest of us.

    Ultimately, it all comes down to preference.

  • Quora Visits Tripled Last Month

    Quora Visits Tripled Last Month

    According to the latest post on the Hitwise blog, the volume of visits to Quora nearly tripled in January due to considerable coverage from technology news websites. Below are highlights from the post:

    • Search has been the major driver of traffic of Quora over the past 6 months and accounted for nearly 49% of the visits last week.
       
    • Social Networks like Facebook and Twitter have also been key as users can share their both their questions and answers among their networks.
       
    • Among the visitors to website, the top 5 Mosaic segments represented 42% of all visits to Quora for the 12 weeks ending February 5, 2011.
       
    • The large share of the audience tends to be characterized by college-educated professionals, along with students poised to join those same segments following graduation.
       
    • For example, the largest segment currently visiting Quora is Major University Towns, which is primarily made up of students and young adults under the age of 35.
       
    • The Young Cosmopolitans segment is another strong segment for Quora, which tends to be the early adopters typically among the first to discover new websites.

  • Hitwise: LivingSocial Gaining Ground On Groupon

    A single high-profile deal has done wonders for LivingSocial’s popularity, according to a new Hitwise report.  The site, which trailed Groupon in terms of visits by a huge margin, closed the gap by a significant amount after offering $20 Amazon gift certificates for $10 last week.

    A disclaimer: it’s of course far too early to say whether the traffic bump will be permanent.  People who are eager to save money may prove happy to go to whatever site can offer them the best bargain, meaning media coverage of another great deal could turn this all on its head in a single day.

    Still, Bill Tancer wrote this afternoon, "In a previous post less then two months ago we analyzed the difference between Groupon and LivingSocial visitors.  At the time, visits to Groupon outnumber those to LivingSocial by a factor of 10-1. . . .  Fast forward to last week.  LivingSocial has closed the gap, now with over half the visits of group coupon leader Groupon."

    Then Tancer added, "LivingSocial’s 80% traffic surge last week (and Groupon’s 20% decline in the same time period) proves that the race for dominance in the group coupon space is far from over.  With LivingSocial still exhibiting a healthy component of early adopters, Google launching a competitive offer and rumors that Facebook might enter the fray, I think I would have taken the $6 billion."

    It should be interesting to see where this goes.  Perhaps LivingSocial will get an acquisition offer of its own as Google tries to build up Google Offers.

    Or Google Offers could just come out of nowhere and, with the support of the search engine giant (its market cap is $197.6 billion right now), take over the sector.

  • Hitwise Finds Visits To Social Networks Surging

    Out of a desire to say "hi" to old friends, reconnect with family members, or perhaps get a moment away from visiting relatives, it looks like lots of people are signing into social networks this month.  Indeed, Hitwise relayed some UK-specific stats today, and the increase has been sharp enough that Facebook might top Google in traffic on Christmas.

    We’ll head straight into the data so that you can head straight back to poking acquaintances.  Robin Goad reported, "As we get closer to Christmas Day visits to social networking sites have reached a new peak for the year, accounting for nearly 13.5% of all UK Internet visits.  In the last week alone there has been a huge uplift in traffic, with visits increasing by 9.7% from 14 to 21 December."

    Next, Goad noted, "More than half of the traffic is being driven by Facebook.  The biggest social site in the world accounted for 57% of all visits to the social networking category in the UK last week and over the Christmas period could create history if it overtakes Google in overall market share online."

    That scenario isn’t at all far-fetched, by the way; here’s a graph of what occurred last year:

    It should be interesting to see how the situation turns out in 2010.  Advertisers are sure to keep a close eye on things.

  • Hitwise Supplies Info On Google-Facebook Email Clash

    Many analysts believe that Facebook will essentially declare war on Google later today, launching an email product that will compete with – and perhaps overthrow – Gmail.  So this morning, Experian Hitwise Research Director Robin Goad weighed in with some stats pertaining to the possible conflict.

    Goad wrote, "As Facebook continues to grow it is increasingly becoming Google’s closest rival."  Then he provided the graph below, which pretty well proves that point.

    Next, Goad reasoned, "With such tight competition between the two online powerhouses it makes sense for Facebook to leverage its huge user base to branch out into other services other than social networking.  Email seems like a natural progression, especially as 9.78% of all visitors to Facebook in October visited an email service immediately before going to Facebook."

    That’s encouraging news for Facebook supporters.  The thing is, though, that an email-related war between Google and Facebook might not amount to more than two also-rans fighting for scraps.  Apparently 58 percent of October’s email-related traffic headed for Hotmail, another 19 percent went to Yahoo, and Gmail saw less than five percent of visits.

    Microsoft’s still very much in control of this industry, then, even if Bing hasn’t been able to pose much of a threat to Google’s search engine.

    Stay tuned for more information about Facebook’s big announcement today, in any event.

  • Bing And Yahoo Lose Search Share In September

     Google captured 72.15 percent of all U.S. searches in September and gained one percent in search share month-over-month, according to a new report from Hitwise.

      Bing powered search received 23.64 percent of searches for the month with Yahoo Search and Bing receiving 13.54 percent and 10.10 percent, respectively. The remaining 65 search engines1 in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis report accounted for 4.22 percent of U.S. searches.

    Hitwise-Search

     Search engines continue to be the primary way that Internet users navigate to key industry categories. Comparing August 2010 with September 2010, shopping and social networking categories showed double-digit increases in their share of traffic coming directly from search engines.

     Google’s percentage of upstream traffic grew for the Automotive, Shopping and Travel categories. Bing saw double-digit growth in four categories — automotive, health, shopping and travel — including a 61 percent increase in the health category.

     Longer search queries — those averaging five to eight words long — decreased 1 percent from August 2010 to September 2010. Seven-word searches and searches of eight or more words increased 1 percent and 4 percent, respectively. One-word searches increased 3 percent. Two-word searches represented the majority of searches, amounting to 24.02 percent of all queries. Shorter search queries — one to four words — were flat from August 2010 to September 2010.

     

     

  • Bing Captures Bigger Share Of U.S. Search Market

    Bing had the most search growth for the month of June, growing 7 percent month- over-month to capture 9.85 percent of the U.S. search market, according to the latest figures released by Hitwise.

    Google accounted for 71.65 percent of the search market, but saw a one percent drop in growth month-over-month.  Yahoo’s search growth was flat, accounting for 14.37 percent of the market and Ask captured 2.19 percent of the search market, with 2 percent growth month-over-month.

     

    Hitwise-Search

     Search engines continue to be the primary way Internet users navigate to key industry categories. Comparing May 2010 with June 2010, automotive, business and finance, entertainment, news and media, shopping and social networking categories showed double-digit increases in their share of traffic coming directly from search engines.

    Among the top three search engines, Google delivered the most visits to automotive, health, shopping and travel categories. Yahoo saw gains in the automotive and shopping categories.  Bing saw triple-digit growth in three categories – automotive, shopping and travel – including a 199 percent increase in the Shopping category.

     

    Search-Traffic

     

    Longer search queries – those averaging five to eight words long – increased 1 percent from May 2010 to June 2010. Two-word searches comprised the majority of searches, amounting to 23.42 percent of all queries. Four- to seven-word searches all increased 1 percent. Shorter search queries – one to four words – were flat from May 2010 to June 2010.
     

     

     

  • Hitwise Predicts Move Into Gaming For Google

    Google’s never been a predictable sort of company.  Its focus on green energy, support for the Klingon language, and decision to set up beehives on corporate property are just a few examples of unusual behavior.  But if Google acts in a rational manner, Hitwise believes the company will enter the gaming sector.

    This isn’t a random guess.  In response to Google’s acquisition of ITA Software, Heather Hopkins wrote, "We at Hitwise have been waiting for such an announcement for some time.  In 2006 when Google Finance was launched, we looked at the top downstream industries from Google and noticed an obvious gap: Travel.  Then again in 2008, when Google Health was launched we did the same analysis and pointed out the same gap."

    And now that Google’s filled the gap, Hopkins concluded, "[T]he next biggest downstream industry from Google.com is Games and Google does not yet have a presence in that industry.  Stay tuned…"

    Hitwise List
    Photo Credit: Hitwise

    The one problem with this prediction might be if Google thinks it already gave gaming a shot in the form of Lively.  Lively didn’t come close to entertaining the average person, though, instead flopping in obscurity.

    So we’ll see what happens.  Maybe Google will find another $700 million it doesn’t quite know what to do with and make another major acquisition.  It seems that all the positive reactions to the recent Pac-Man doodle should have encouraged the company, at least.

     

     

  • Facebook Ranked as The Top Search Term In March

    Facebook ranked as the top search term in March across all three major search engines, according to a new report from Hitwise.

    Overall, Facebook related terms accounted for eight searches across the three top 10 lists.

    Yahoo related terms accounted for six spots while MySpace terms accounted for four searches across the search engines. Other search terms that were among the top 10 searches for all three search engines include YouTube, Facebook login, craigslist, and Yahoo Mail.

    Hitwise-Top-Search-Terms

    eBay was the top paid search term across the three search engines in March, according to  Hitwise. Overall, eBay related terms accounted for eight searches across the three top 10 lists. There were six other terms that accounted for three spots across the search engines including Netflix, Yellow Pages, Lowes, Home Depot, Verizon Wireless and White Pages.
     

     

    Hitwise-Top-Paid-Terms

  • Hitwise Documents Bebo’s Decline

    Anyone who’s shocked that AOL is giving up on Bebo will probably feel a lot more understanding after viewing new stats from Hitwise.  Indeed, the real question a graph seems to raise is not whether AOL’s right to back away, but whether any potential buyers will surface.

    View the carnage for yourself below.  As you can see, Bebo’s had rather few "up" weeks in the UK since June of 2007, even though Ireland was traditionally one of the markets in which it was most successful.

    Facebook, meanwhile, has seen its popularity skyrocket, leaving it with a UK market share about 32.7 times larger than Bebo’s.

    The news isn’t all bad for AOL and Bebo.  In his report, Hitwise’s Robin Goad pointed out that Bebo ranks fourth in the social networking category (which puts it ahead of MySpace), and 31st overall.  Lots of networks and companies aspire to that sort of prominence.

    Still, the steadiness of the site’s decline isn’t likely to incite a bidding war.  AOL will be lucky to get back even a fraction of the $850 million it paid for Bebo in early 2008.

  • Hitwise Dubs Facebook “Most Searched On Brand In U.S.”

    It looks like Mark Zuckerberg is going to have to make more room in his trophy case.  Hitwise has devised a new metric termed "breadth volume," and Facebook is beating brands like Google, Yahoo, and Craigslist is this respect by quite a lot.

    First, here’s an explanation of exactly what we’re talking about: Hitwise’s Bill Tancer wrote, "We’re now able to provide a new search metric beyond volume (search volume for a specific term over all term volume) and breadth (# of search term variations over all search term variations), our new metric which I’ll call breadth volume, sums the volume for all variations on a root term."

    As for the actual rankings, Facebook came in first for the week ending March 27th with a breadth volume of 2.80 percent.  Google came in second with a breadth volume of 2.40 percent, and then things really dropped off as Yahoo, Craigslist, and MySpace showed up in the rankings with breadth volumes of 1.60 percent, 1.10 percent, and 1.10 percent again (in a tie).

    Tancer even created a graph to show how Facebook is extending its lead over the competition.

    This could translate into more good news for the social network in terms of attracting advertisers, investors, and users.

  • Facebook Users Favor Online News Sites

    Internet users who click on links posted on Facebook that lead to news and media websites are more loyal to those portals than those coming from Google News, according to new data from Hitwise.

    Among the most popular top 5 print media websites for the week ending March 6, 78 percent of Facebook users were returning visitors compared to 67 percent from Google news. The same was true for broadcast media, with 77 percent returning for Facebook compared to 64 percent for Google News.

    Returning-Visitors

    Heather Hopkins, Senior Online Analyst, Hitwise, collected the numbers using clickstream data. The metric reports the percentage of visits by source (i.e. Google, Yahoo! Google News, Facebook, etc) that were new versus returning. New visitors are defined as those that haven’t visited the site within the past 30 days.

    "Interestingly, visitors from Google are less likely to be returning visitors than average for either Google News or Facebook," said Hopkins.

    "This reinforces the long term value to News and Media organizations of working with the likes of Google News and Facebook."
     

     

  • Twitter Responsible For Very Little Visits To News and Media

    The latest post from Hitwise discusses where users travel after leaving Twitter. The post further breaks down the various news and media sites which receive the greatest traffic from Twitter.
     

    • Twitter.com accounted for 0.14% of upstream visits to News and Media sites last week. (Note that we are measuring website visits from Twitter.com only.) This compares to 3.64% from Facebook and 1.27% from Google News.
    • Facebook was the #3 source of visits to News and Media websites last week. Google News was the #11 site and Twitter.com ranked #39.
    • Upstream visits from Twitter.com to News and Media sites have grown by 54% over the past year.

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  • Facebook Unseats Google As Most-Visited Site

    Although the "thud" wasn’t verified until this afternoon, it seems that an online giant fell a couple of days ago.  According to new data from Hitwise, Facebook managed to beat Google in terms of visits between March 7th and March 13th, becoming the most visited website in the U.S. for the week.

    The graph visible below makes the changeup pretty clear (blame the sloppy enlarged bit on us, not Hitwise).  What’s more, it doesn’t look like Facebook’s going to relinquish its lead anytime soon.

    Heather Dougherty explained, "The market share of visits to Facebook.com increased 185% last week as compared to the same week in 2009, while visits to Google.com increased 9% during the same time frame."

    Then here’s one more interesting fact, courtesy of Dougherty: "Together Facebook.com and Google.com accounted for 14% of all US Internet visits last week."

    Anyway, this development represents a major win for Facebook.  The ability to represent the social network as the number one site should count for a lot as corporate representatives talk to advertisers and investors, and could result in a direct boost in revenue.  A further snowball effect in terms of user interest might occur, too, since most people like to be part of something that’s popular.

  • Bing And Ask Increase Search Share In January

    Bing saw the number of U.S. searches on its site increase 5 percent in January from December to 9.37 percent of the search market, according to a new report from Hitwise.

    Ask also had a 4 percent increase in the number of searches from December to account for 2.64 percent of the search market.

    Google still dominated with 71.49 percent of the search market but saw a month-over-month decline of 1 percent. Yahoo landed in the second position with 14.57 percent of the search market and also had a month-over-month decline of 2 percent.

    Hitwise-searches.jpg

    Longer search queries, averaging searches of five to more than eight words in length, were up 5 percent between December and January. Searches of eight or more words increased 6 percent.

    The same time period showed that shorter search queries, averaging one to four words, were down 1 percent from month to month. Searches of one word consisted of the majority of searches, accounting for 23.67 percent of all queries.

    Search

    engines remain the primary way Internet users navigate to key industry categories. Comparing January with December, automotive, business and finance, entertainment, news and media, shopping, social networking and sports categories showed double digit increases in their share of traffic coming from search engines.

    Among the top three search engines, Google sent the most visits to the automotive, health, shopping and travel categories. Bing saw double-digit growth among all four categories, including a 94 percent increase in the health category.
     

    Related Articles:

    > Microsoft Exec Talks Bing Success/Profitability

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    > Bing Gets Localeze To Augment Local Biz Listings

     

  • Hitwise: Social Networks Neck And Neck With Search Engines

    As a group, search engines appear to be in the process of losing bragging rights in Australia.  Social networking sites and forums (also taken as a group) topped search engines in terms of market share over Christmas and are poised to assume the lead on a permanent basis.

    Hitwise’s Alan Long wrote this morning, "The chart below confirms that during the week of Christmas . . . the Social Networking and Forum industry category overtook Search Engines share of visits for the very first time.  While this looked like a short term lead, we are now seeing continued growth of Social Networking and Forums to now sit just 0.4% share behind Search Engines in week ending 16 January 2010."

    That’s an impressive fact, especially if you consider how far social networks have come in the last six months.

    The one potential problem with the Hitwise analysis is that YouTube has been classified as a social network.  Marshall Kirkpatrick observed that the site also functions as a search engine, and so social networks and forums may not deserve to have it (and its impressive numbers) on their side.

    Still, it’s obvious that social networks are becoming more and more popular however the numbers are spliced.

    Related Articles:

    > More Reporters Using Facebook And Twitter For Story Research

    > 33% Of Online Pop. Pegged As "Conversationalists"

    > 66% Of Government Agencies Use Social Networking