The Most Outstanding WebCenter Owner for July
We’d like to take a second to acknowledge the top sellers for the month of July. Tying each other with five Web site sales each, we’d like to congratulate returning champ, John Zaino and Victor Lee, the Most Outstanding WebCenter Owners for July!!! Superb effort, gentlemen!!
Search Engine Statistics
Good news for on-line retail businesses. A recent study by Hitwise showed that the number one industry searched for in directories today is Shopping and Classifieds.
The study also broke down search engines’ popularity by market share.
Search Engine Visit Market Share for the Week of July 23, 2005
| Rank | Name | Domain | Visit
Market
Share | Average
Session
Time
(hr/min) | | 1 | Google | www.google.com | 39.34 | 12:10 | | 2 | Yahoo! Search | search.yahoo.com | 18.16 | 10:59 | | 3 | MSN Search | search.msn.com | 15.32 | 06:31 | | 4 | Google Image Search | Images.google.com | 3.95 | 13:39 | | 5 | Ask.com | www.askjeeves.com | 2.09 | 08:57 | | 6 | Yahoo! Image Search | images.search.yahoo.com | 1.52 | 14:06 | | 7 | AOL Search | www.aolsearch.com | 0.96 | 07:15 | | 8 | My Web Search | mywebsearch.com | 0.81 | 09:51 | | 9 | Dogpile | www.dogpile.com | 0.77 | 12:30 | | 10 | My Search | www.mysearch.com | 0.64 | 08:51 |
*Source: Hitwise, 2005 From the data, researchers concluded that as search engines get more sophisticated, content will play a much bigger role in the struggle for dominance. "The next battle in search is going to be providing content. The search engine that can provide me with the answers with the least amount of effort is going to be the one to win over time." predicts Bill Tancer, VP of research at Hitwise.
Did you know?
Google controls 83.2% of search engine results. How is this possible? Well, even though Google commands only 29.5% of the market personally, four of the other top search engines: Yahoo, AOL, Netscape and Earthlink all pull their results from Google’s main directory as well. Did you know?
Twenty-eight percent (28%) of users looking for products are far more likely to type the product name into a search engine's search box than browse shopping "channels" (5%) or click on ads (4%).
- Jupiter Media Metrix & NPD Did you know?
According to iProspect.com, ninety-seven percent (97%) of Fortune 100 companies had some type of site architecture problem that could give them problems being found by search engines. Did you know?
In 2004, the word that users looked up most often online at Webster’s Dictionary was “Blog”. The mild irony was that blog was not yet in the dictionary in 2004; then again, its newness must be precisely why so many people looked it up.
Dear WebCenter 411:
WebCenter Owner, Jeff Mason asks: “Should we let Web site prospects know that the site will be up for 15 days?” WebCenter owners often ask this question. Basically, it is never a good idea to let the prospect know that they have two weeks to decide whether or not they would like to purchase the site. This leaves no room for the Web Specialist to create a sense of urgency. Without a sense of urgency, the closing ratio will be significantly lower.
Semantic Mapping in Search Engines
The idea behind Semantic Mapping is that when we are searching, most users look for the best match between a query and the concept in our minds – not the keywords. When we find a conceptual match, users tend to respond to it more often – regardless of its position on the search engine page.
A recent study discovered two important behavioral events that occur when searching. First, our eyes jump around on search pages -- looking for the best conceptual match; and we tend to use our peripheral vision when searching for that match.
Using this new information, Semantic Mapping could lead to a whole new level of search engine sophistication. One where the search engines’ pages are designed to match concepts rather than keywords with the user; and one that takes advantage of subtler types of behavior such as the searcher's peripheral vision.
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May 2007 Monthly Newsletter
