Hitwise: Google Gets >71% of Searches

For the first four weeks of November, Google fielded 71.57% of all online searches in the US, according to Hitwise reports today. They’re up a percentage point over their October 2009 numbers—but they’re the only one doing so well.

Yahoo, still #2 in searches served, fell three quarters of a percentage point—and when your share is down to 15.39%, that tiny change represents a drop off of nearly 5%. Bing, meanwhile, also fell in November, but only 2% (a quarter of a percentage point). Ask, that big winner, saw a 1% increase over October—but considering that’s a shift of 0.03 percentage points, maybe it’s not something that should go on their resume. The 52 other search engines Hitwise monitors accounted for 1% of searches.

Perhaps most interesting in this release is the look at Bing’s boost for verticals. While Google continues to send the most traffic to sites in the automotive, travel, and shopping categories, Bing has made double digit (percent) improvements over Live’s position last year for sending downstream traffic:

Percentage of U.S. upstream traffic from search engines among verticals

	Google			Yahoo! Search			Bing
Vertical	Nov-08	Nov-09	YoY % Change	Nov-08	Nov-09	YoY % Change	Nov-08	Nov-09	YoY % Change
Automotive	18.38%	21.10%	15%	4.26%	3.96%	-7%	1.26%	2.34%	86%
Health	32.69%	31.62%	-3%	6.31%	5.05%	-20%	1.78%	3.40%	91%
Shopping	18.12%	19.29%	6%	4.22%	3.91%	-7%	1.30%	2.26%	74%
Travel	26.77%	28.87%	8%	4.95%	4.26%	-14%	1.86%	2.86%	54%

Note: Data is based on monthly upstream traffic from the Hitwise sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users and does not include news searches.

*This includes executed searches on Bing.com, Live.com and MSN Search but does not include searches on Club.Live.com.

Source: Experian Hitwise

What do you think? Could vertical search be the big thing for Bing, or is that too specialized for a would-be Google competitor?

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Consumers Sharing Brand Opinions on Social Networks

Performics reports that Twitter may be the place to get your brand mentioned if you want social networkers’ attention, according to MediaPost. Nearly half (48%) of those who saw a brand mentioned on Twitter turned to a search engine to research that brand. Other social networks lagged far behind, with 34% researching.

However, the study of 3000 active social networkers showed that 70% were on Facebook, and 22% were on Twitter. So of those respondents, 32 researched a brand from Twitter, while Facebook sent 714 running to their search engine of choice.

30% of those surveyed admitted they’ve learned about a product, service or brand from a social network (considerably more than the <5% Knowledge Networks reported in May.)

MediaPost says:

The study found that 44% of people have recommended a product on Twitter, and 39% have discussed a product on Twitter. Facebook skewed a bit higher. Forty-six percent of respondents say they would talk about or recommend a product on Facebook.

Online coupons are the best received brand/product messages. However, most of the findings reinforce the need for companies to maintain presences not only on social networks, but also in search engine results.

Interestingly, companies seem to be more interested in where the consumers are rather than where they see the highest percentage of brand interest. MediaPost reports in another story that

Some 83% of consumer-facing companies maintain a presence on Facebook, compared to 45% on Twitter. Usage was more evenly split among business-to-business companies, with roughly three-quarters of firms maintaining profiles on both services.

What do you think? Is it more important for a business to be where more people are or more brand research? Have you researched brands mentioned on social networks?

Citibank Survey: Small Business Finds Social Media Ineffective

A Citibank/GFK Roper survey of 500 U.S. businesses with fewer than 100 employees has found very few small businesses in the U.S. have adopted social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter for business uses. The findings include:

Three-quarters of the small business owners surveyed say they have not found sites such as Facebook, Twitter and [...]

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Top CEO’s Appear to be Anti Social (Media, that is)

With all the talk of social media this and social media that, it’s hard not to feel some pressure to be involved in some way or another. That is unless, of course, you are one of the CEO of some of the biggest companies in the world, as TechCrunch reports on a survey conducted by UBERCEO. Apparently the Top 100 companies of the Fortune 500 have CEO’s that are not getting in the game. Considering some of the press these guys and gals get these days that may be a good idea.

The highlights

• Only two CEOs have Twitter accounts.
• 13 CEOs have LinkedIn profiles, and of those only three have more than 10 connections.
• 81% of CEOs don’t have a personal Facebook page.
• Three quarters of the CEOs have some kind of Wikipedia entry, but nearly a third of those have limited or outdated information.
• Not one Fortune 100 CEO has a blog.

So is this a problem? Of course, that is a question that is open to opinion so let me chime in with mine. CEOs who run companies of any real influence should tread extremely lightly in the social media space. If the company is publically traded the risks involved, at least on the surface, seem to far outweigh the potential upside.

Let’s be realistic as well. Does anyone really think that they are going to become a “bff” of a CEO just through social media? Is this the new way to get from the mail room to the boardroom in today’s corporate world? Not likely.

Also, there is a better than fair chance that when a CEO is actually involved in this kind of medium, many would suspect that it wouldn’t really be the CEO doing the work. You can’t turn around without hearing the cries of “There are not enough hours in the day to keep up with social media!” so the likelihood of a busy CEO carving out some time to tweet or post or update anything is not real high. One side effect of the ridiculous amount of information that is available to everyone today is the increasingly high level of skepticism that comes along with it. Why have to try to prove that you (if you are that CEO actually making the social media effort) are really the one sending tweets and updating their Facebook page?

Social media efforts have to be careful to not run too far ahead of themselves. There needs to be a lot of crawling before a full sprint social media effort by anyone is undertaken. Based on that, it might be wise to keep the CEO’s to their regular jobs. A lot of good work can be undone real quickly by one bad moment from the C-suite that is broadcast to the world via social media channels. Why risk that?