Blogsearch Share

LeeAnn Prescott, over at Hitwise, posts about blogsearch market share - the takeaway is that Google's blog search is beating Technorati.

Readers of this blog may recall a post I made back in October, on the 23rd, which delivered similar information. The graph below, which I've copied from that post, shows just the same jump in traffic from Google's blog search as the Hitwise graph above. It is important to note the differences. I was looking at actions taken as a result of searching - looking at how people arrived at a blog. I believe the Hitwise data looks at visitors to the search sites. Search is only one thing that can be performed on Technorati. To make an extreme example, if Technorati's blog was hugely popular and no-one was using Technorati for search, Hitwise's results wouldn't show this (at least, that is how I interpret their description of the data using the 'www.technorati.com' label).

The Hitwise post has some further interesting details regarding the demographic breakdown of users.

Discussion over at Niall's blog revolves around Technorati's reliability issues driving people to use Google's solution. Interestingly, this comment over on Search Engine Land claims the same problems for Google's blogsearch.

With all the talk of late regarding the reliability of visitor/impression data and how things have to change, I'm disappointed to see that there is no fact checking of the original Hitwise post - every post I've seen thus far on the topic just quotes LeeAnn with no discussion other than to guess as to the reason for the changes in traffic.

Comments

[Greg Gershman]

With their latest updates, Technorati has been making more links on their site lead to other services on their site (so, clicking on a blog's title takes you to the T'rati page for that blog), rather than to a location outside their site. This could be a factor in your analysis, and might have the opposite effect on the Hitwise data (if they are measuring page views).

I think in some ways this is all irrelevant (or, "the whole premise of this article is stupid" ;) ). Of course more people are going to use GBS once it's hooked up to Google search results - the single most popular page on the Internet - and News Search. But this really says nothing about how the two are competing. It's most likely that the increased usership of GBS did not visit GBS directly, they got there because of the link from Google. But are users of Technorati switching to GBS? Are other blog search services losing users? How many folks who visited GBS also visited Technorati or other services? Are folks who discover blog search via Google/GBS looking for more information, and discover alternative services that provide richer functionality?

All the Hitwise post confirms is that Google can dramatically increase a site's visibility by more directly incorporating it into their ecosystem. The Hitwise blog exists to showcase their services, so the more sensational they can make their examples, the better for them.

[Matthew Hurst]

Greg,

All excellent points. Personally, I'm disappointed (as I mention) by the blogosphere's echo chamber reaction to topics like this. Many bloggers, especially, it seems, from the more visible blogs, simply pick these things up and repeat them without stopping to think and comment as you have.