Web Users are Promiscuous

Are Web users faithful to the sites they use? This is the question that Nielsen//NetRatings offers an answer to in their most recent month-over-month data for search, career development, and travel Web sites. The leaders in these three sectors (Google, CareerBuilder, and Expedia, respectively) did a good job of keeping their users faithful, but others had a harder time.

In the search realm, Google topped the list with regards to retention with a rate of 79%, followed by Yahoo! with 69%, and MSN/Windows Live with a 65% retention rate. Still, many users chose to “overlap” and search again with another engine.

MSN users were the most prone to overlap, with 84% of its users searching with other search engines. Yahoo! also experienced a high overlap rate, with 78% of them doing so. Despite Google’s high retention rate, 63% of its users still opted to conduct overlap searches with competing search engines.

This may disrupt any notion that some may have had about the loyalty that users have for the search engines, and sites in general, that they use. One thing that is clear from these indications is that those nice and tidy monthly market share numbers do not paint the whole picture.

Does overlap behavior leave more room for the potential shift in the market leadership in any Web category? This, of course, seems to be the question of interest that stems from this data, and there is no sure answer.

For advertisers, this seems to strengthen the evidence for effectiveness of paid search campaigns run across multiple search engines. The overlap exposure is far from insignificant, and should be taken into serious consideration.

Search engines experienced strong retention rates, while career and travel sites did not. This is mostly due to the situational nature that career and travel sites thrive on.

Source:

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