Thursday, March 11th, 2010

Experian Hitwise today announced that ’s share of searches has increased for the third straight month.

Keywords & Content: Search Marketing Foundations

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In other news, accounted for 71 percent of all U.S. searches conducted in the four weeks ending Feb. 27, 2010. ! Search accounted for 15 percent. accounted for 10 percent. And .com received 3 percent. The remaining 73 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for less than 2 percent of U.S. searches.

Although marketers probably don’t need to change anything that they are currently doing because of the trends above, Hitwise reported another trend that may require some adjustments.

The loss comes at the advantage to several smaller players.

and lost an entire point in the search rankings last month, according to Nielsen Online. !, , , and other smaller players gained.

Most appeared to gain queries compared to December.

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According to Experian Hitwise data released today, searches on increased 5 percent and search on increased 4 percent in January 2010, while searches on decreased 1 percent and searches on ! decreased 2 percent.

Bing Toolbox: Your One-Stop Shop for Better ROI

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In terms of market share, accounted for 71.5 percent of all U.S. searches conducted in the four weeks ending Jan. 31, 2010. ! Search, and .com received 14.6 percent, 9.4 percent and 2.6 percent, respectively. The remaining 65 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.9 percent of U.S. searches.

.com U.S. President Doug Leeds our questions.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to chat with .com U.S. President Doug Leeds about the new “Question of the Day” feature that debuted this week. Leeds championed the new feature internally at .com and is quite passionate about how it reflects the brand’s larger search strategy.

Leeds informed me that the Question of the Day feature first launched in the U.K. It did so well there, that they’re trying it out stateside.

“Before search, asking questions is the way we got that information,” said Leeds. “We changed our behavior. You couldn’t just a search engine a question.”

Over at .com today, there’s a “Question of the Day” box over the main search box. Apparently, today’s question is “How many women have received the Medal of Honor?” We haven’t seen this on .com before, though we have seen hints of it with specific ad campaigns, such as the one for the Night at the Museum sequel last spring.

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Click on the question and it takes you to a page, where the answer appears at the top and then organic results and other features such as related searches appear as well:

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My initial reaction:

Online has released their search rankings for November 2009. Things remain awesome for and .com saw a hop. But gained the most, increasing by an entire percentage point from October. Meanwhile, ! was down 0.1% and was down 0.2% month-over-month.

November 2009

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October 2009

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Online has released their search rankings for November 2009. Things remain awesome for and .com saw a hop. But gained the most, increasing by an entire percentage point from October. Meanwhile, ! was down 0.1% and was down 0.2% month-over-month.

November 2009

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October 2009

Screen shot 2009-12-16 at 3.10.06 PM.png

Online has released their search rankings for November 2009. Things remain awesome for and .com saw a hop. But gained the most, increasing by an entire percentage point from October. Meanwhile, ! was down 0.1% and was down 0.2% month-over-month.

November 2009

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October 2009

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Ask.com gets a lot of their search queries in the form of a question – more so than any other search engine. So, it makes sense that their end-of-the-year list features questions instead of keywords.

The questions are a refreshing departure from the usual fare seen on the end-of-year lists from other search engines. They’re also humorous, curious – and yes, existential.

  1. How much should I weigh?
  2. How do I get out of debt fast?
  3. How do I get pregnant?
  4. What is Twitter?
  5. What is Miley Cyrus’ phone number?
  6. What is the meaning of life?

has launched a new Deals page, almost two months after .com unveiled their new site. ’s page features the 900 retailers included in Checkout. The site ain’t pretty either:

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You can access the site at www.google.com/checkout/deals.html

Meanwhile, is taking on ! in Times Square. You might remember Yahoo! is offering free Wifi in Times Square. wants people in Times Square to search via Voice by calling 888-376-4336. to the queries appear on electronic billboards. This is part of a campaign to promote the new Motorola Droid, which uses Android.googletimessquare113009.jpg