Bigmouthmedia search engine news: trends-stats

Digital friends: online-only relationships on the rise

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 12:00:00 GMT

A new study from TNS Global has released a goldmine of information surrounding recent digital trends. The study, entitled "Digital World, Digital Life", was conducted in 16 countries with over 27,000 people aged 15-55 taking part.

Highlights from the report include information showing that virtual friendships are now the norm for many people across the Western world. Industry website Herd said the study found that people from the UK have an average of 17 online-only friends - representing about 25 per cent of their friends in total.

Surprisingly, those between the ages of 35 and 44 had higher proportions of online-only friends, with 33 per cent of their pals being online, than younger age groups. Americans see their number of online-only friends at 20 per cent, while Australians have the highest percentage at 40 per cent.

And when it's time to revel in our time off, those of us in Western Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand are now spending between a quarter to a third of our leisure time online.

"Based on TNS's data, in the US 30% of customers' free time is being spent in a medium where they have no exposure to traditional big bucks marketing campaigns," wrote TNS.

The survey found that in particular, British housewives are spending 47 per cent of their leisure time on the Internet. UK housewives spend more time online than the Chinese (44 per cent) and Koreans (40 per cent). The rest of Britain spends about 28 per cent of their free-time on the Internet.

The stats from the TNS report also support recent evidence from a US-focused Pew Research report that found many people believe blogs lack credibility when it comes to reporting current events.

The Pew Research study found that 38 per cent of people trusted online news, but that trust did not extend to blogs.

"While between 20-40% of consumers in Western countries read and contribute to blogs, they by and large take what they read with a pinch of salt," Herd reported. Globally, only about 10 per cent of people report that they trust blogs for news.

So it seems that people are logging on to exchange stories and gossip but that doesn't mean that their trust extends to factual information.

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Music downloads have got the X Factor

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 12:00:00 GMT

This year's X Factor winner Alexandra Burke has had the fastest selling download single ever in Europe this week. Her debut single, a cover of the Leonard Cohen classic 'Hallelujah', was released at midnight on Saturday, just 2 hours after she was crowned the winner of the show. It sold 105,000 copies on the first day of release, smashing the previous record set by the 2006 X Factor winner Leona Lewis, who sold 82,000 copies of her debut 'A Moment Like This'.

Gennaro Castaldo of HMV said: "We're seeing a phenomenal rush to download the Hallelujah single from our website. It's both our fastest and biggest selling download ever"

The single is set to make Christmas number one this weekend, with the closest contender for the top spot being Peter Kay's single 'Once Upon a Christmas Song' by the 'winner' of spoof TV talent show Britain's Got The Pop Factor and Possibly a New Jesus Christ Soapstar Superstar Strictly on Ice.

This year's X Factor final was a recorder breaker itself, having the largest viewing figures of any X Factor series so far. With a TV audience of 14.6 million, the show had the highest ratings for an entertainment show since an Only Fools and Horses Christmas special in 2003.

This download record should come as no surprise in the week where 'Cyber Monday' saw online sales volumes up 18% on last year. This Christmas season more and more shoppers are choosing to avoid the crowds and do their spending online. James Roper, CEO of IMRG stated that "Online sales are holding up well, considering the economic conditions, with both volumes and values significantly higher than last year."

The increasing popularity of gadgets like the iPhone, the growing use of the mobile web, and the step away from buying physical CD singles mean online music downloads are becoming more accessible - good news for online vendors such as iTunes and HMV.com. It just goes to show that being one step ahead of the trends can pay off dividends - even when the record breaker is a new take on an old classic.

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Cyber Monday - UK's busiest online shopping day of 2008

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 12:00:00 GMT

Internet shopping is increasingly popular with consumers in the UK, and it's not hard to see why. Not only does it offer the chance to escape the high-pressured shopping environment of the high street but there's also the chance of picking up bargains only available online.

The rapid approach of Christmas is sure to draw an increased amount of people toward computers and the second Monday in December - 'Cyber' or 'Mega' Monday as it has become known - is renowned for being one of the busiest internet shopping days of the year. It has been forecast that for December 2008, £320 million will be spent online, amongst consumers who are attempting to beat the Christmas high street shopping rush.

In fact, it had been predicted that £28 million would be spent within one hour, between 1300-1400 GMT - also known as 'lunch time'. The second major peak in sales is expected to take place during 1800-2100 GMT. What's more, it has been predicted that online Christmas shopping will prove popular for many employees in the workplace in 2008, with at least 5.2 million people making their Christmas purchases from behind the desk.

It is also expected that one in ten online shoppers will have their gifts delivered to their place of work. An increase in working shoppers perhaps has something to do with employers becoming more accommodating with their employees performing Christmas shopping in the workplace. It is seen to be less time consuming compared to an employee having to visit the shops in the high street during their lunch break, which can at times take longer than expected and therefore, take up valuable work time.

IMRG - the internet trade body - have stated that the total Christmas online retail sales in the UK could reach as much as £13.6 billion. In fact, the main e-tailers expected to perform well within retail sales include popular entertainment websites Play.com and Amazon. This is simply due to the fact that electrical goods, music CDs and DVDs often prove cheaper on such sites than in the high street.

The fact that more consumers are taking their time to properly research the marketplace to purchase online at Christmas perhaps comes as no surprise; with the recent economic downturn in mind, cheaper alternatives are now a priority for many shoppers. It's certain that popular large chain retailers, such as Debenhams and M&S for example, know what they are doing when offering 20 percent discounts with purchases made online. Such offers will be more than welcome to customers searching for online bargains in these current financial times.

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Google's top searches down under precede year-end Zeitgeist

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 12:00:00 GMT

For search lovers, the announcement of Google's year-end Zeitgeist - a regular feature on its annual calendar since 2001 - is an eagerly anticipated event. The list reveals "the sign of the times" - i.e., the most popular searches conducted on Google throughout the year - and tends to act as a barometer of our interests and pursuits over the past 12 months.

Mountain View is yet to release its global Zeitgeist for 2008 but if you're looking for an appetite whetter, this year's hottest search topics in Australia and New Zealand have been announced. The top ten Australian searches for the year aren't much to look at: "games" tops the list, while "Sydney", "YouTube", "MySpace", "Facebook" and - that's right - "Google" follow behind.

But, as with Google's global Zeitgeist, it's when the list gets broken down into categories that it becomes really interesting. The fastest rising Australian search term this year was "iPhone" - a distinct overlap with last year's global fastest rising search term. The most searched for TV shows included Big Brother, The Simpsons and Heroes, while the most searched for movie was perhaps unsurprisingly Baz Luhrmann's "Australia", with The Dark Knight pipping Indiana Jones to second place. Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt also lost out to Australian swimmer Stephanie Rice in the top ten most popular Olympic-related searches.

However, unlike Yahoo!'s top searches for 2008 - in which Britney Spears and World Wrestling Entertainment beat American president-elect Barack Obama to the top positions in the US - Obama came first in the top ten most searched for celebrities down under, with Britney relegated to fifth place.

The top searches on google.co.nz this year aren't too different to those in Australia, with "games" once again topping the list. However, the fastest rising searches of 2008 in New Zealand do show some significant differences; "iPhone" doesn't even get a look in, with "Olympics" in first. Other variants include the "Large Hadron Collider" and the "Jonas Brothers".

In an overlap with one of Yahoo!'s hot trends for 2008, Aussie actor Health Ledger was the most searched for death this year, while Britney took another drop to sixth place in the most popular celebrity searches in New Zealand. Obama wasn't top of this list either - instead it was US R&B heartthrob Chris Brown.

So can Australia and New Zealand's most popular searches give us an indication of what's to come from the Google Zeitgeist for 2008? Obama is certain to be a prevalent figure, as is former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. And if Google's Zeitgeist for 2007 was anything to go by, we can certainly expect the search engine to find a new and innovative way of presenting its year-end report to its legions of followers. Watch this space for more news on the Google Zeitgeist for 2008 - or, if you're feeling impatient, satisfy your daily appetite for statistics with Google Trends.

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Yahoo! searchers choose Britney over Obama

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 12:00:00 GMT

He may have just made history as the first black president in America but unfortunately for Barack Obama, he's just not as exciting as Britney Spears. Like his opponent he had a few music videos on Youtube, but it takes an extra special charisma to win the Yahoo! title of 'Most Searched 2008'. Sadly for Obama, he's just too careful when he gets out of taxis and his hair doesn't change dramatically enough to really win the hearts and minds of Yahoo! searchers. Of course he was up against a tough opponent. Britney Spears has spent seven years in the top ten, and now four at number one.

While Britney was at the top for both countries, searches for the US and the UK differed slightly. The US searches focused mainly on celebrities, while in the UK we were more focussed on reality TV, with Big Brother and X Factor both making the top three.

US Top Searches

1. Britney Spears
2. WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment)
3. Barack Obama
4. Miley Cyrus
5. RuneScape
6. Jessica Alba
7. Naruto
8. Lindsay Lohan
9. Angelina Jolie
10. American Idol

UK top searches

1. Britney Spears
2. Big Brother
3. X Factor
4. Oasis
5. High School Musical 3
6. US Election
7. Amy Winehouse
8. Heath Ledger
9. Kate Moss
10. Eastenders

Obama wasn't the only politician to lose out to a celebrity. Yahoo!'s list of influential women featured political campaigner Sarah Palin who unfortunately took second place to Angelina Jolie. Although Palin may be upset about losing out to Jolie, she'll no doubt be secretly pleased to see she beat John McCain in overall political searches.

Political searches may have been of huge importance for Yahoo! users, but for Ask users many searchers may not have actually made it to the voting booths. 'How do I get pregnant?' was the most searched question for 2008, with 'how do I register to vote?' trailing in at number eight.

Yahoo! concluded its 2008 list with a list of sweet farewells that have made search history for 2008 - a top ten that's noticeably missing US computer science expert Randy Pausch, who died in July this year and was chosen by Time as one of the world's top one hundred influential people.

1. Health Ledger
2. Bernie Mac
3. Paul Newman
4. Randy Pausch
5. George Carlin
6. Estelle Getty
7. Tim Russert
8. Brad Renfro
9. Isaac Hayes
10. Boyd Coddington

Every year the search engines reveal what we really care about. While the US elections may have a dramatic effect on how the British economy fairs out, it seems that we're all a little more concerned about when High School Musical 3 will be showing. Even amongst the election fever-pitch of the United States this year, wrestling was seen to be that little bit more worthy of a search query. Let's see what 2009 will bring, and if there's anything strong enough to knock Britney from the number one spot.

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Windows market share drops below 90% for the first time in 2 years

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 12:00:00 GMT

New statistics show that the percentage of Windows users dropped below 90 per cent for the first time in 2 years last month.

The figures relate to the operating system used to access sites monitored by Net Applications in November.

The market share for Windows was 90.46 per cent in October, but has dropped to 89.62 per cent in November. This is the first time in 2 years that Microsoft's domination of the market has slipped to below 90 per cent.

The nearest rival is Macintosh, with an 8.87 per cent share in November which is an increase on October when it was just 8.21 per cent. The rest have a less than 1 per cent share each, including Linux at 0.83 per cent (up from 0.71 per cent), iPhone at 0.37 per cent (up from 0.33 per cent) and Playstation at 0.04 per cent (up from 0.03 per cent).

According to The Register, Net Applications explained that since most internet surfing on Windows takes place during working hours, Thanksgiving could be to blame for this drop in Windows use, with users more likely to access the internet on their aesthetically friendly Macbooks or Playstations.

Similarly, further statistics on browser use from Net Applications reveal that Firefox has seen market share increase to over 20 per cent for the first time in November. Microsoft Internet Explorer comes in top at 69.77 per cent, followed by Firefox with 20.78 per cent, and Safari with 7.13 per cent. Chrome, the browser offering from search engine giant Google, has a share of 0.83 per cent.

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Fan pages doomed by social saturation

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:00:00 GMT

Social media websites are incredibly, and increasingly, powerful. They have masses of traffic, frequent updates of fresh content and often huge number of links. Nearly every music artist today has a social media page, whether it's an official site or some created by a loyal fan. Popular social media platforms for music artists include:

Last.fm
MySpace
Wikipedia
YouTube

Most artists will also have an official website, so the opportunity to saturate SERP's with a large number of official and social media pages is huge.

And that number could soon be set to expand. Facebook very recently made a move into this market when it opened up internal linking on user profile pages. Facebook now lists "fan of" which link back to the artist's official site to fan sites meaning the social network is hot on the heels of other music friendly online communities.

So what does this mean for fan sites?

Well, if you are a fan site owner, you should be worried; this first-page saturation of social sites will eat up a percentage of your traffic, especially if you rank well for artist names etc. The pie is going to be shared that little bit more. If you are an affiliate marketer and you make commission from running fan sites, you may find your earnings falling short of previous times which will also have a knock on effect on merchants.

If you Google the music artist "U2" (a favourite over at bigmouthmedia) you can see how social media sites are and could result in saturation of the search results. 8/10 in this case - not bad. That's us excluding any MP3, ringtone, lyric or retail giants.

How will Google react?

Well, if you remember back to around 2003-2004 when retail giants like eBay and Amazon used to dominate the retail market for search terms you'll recall that there was not a term a user could query without either of these two giants appearing. Google then spotted that many of the results that were being returned were "search generated pages" - pages that were being generated from the results of a website's internal search facility. Google, understandably, did not want to show search results from other sites within its own search results and included documentation within their webmaster guidelines to prevent such pages appearing. The question now is whether Google will develop similar rules for social media, or whether these results will be seen as of high value to users? Does history provide us with a clue as to the way certain queries will be displayed in future?

Google's universal search results tend to show a wide variety of websites, be it be a blog, fan site, informational entry, picture, video, news story or product. However, this is increasingly not the case for entertainment searches - especially music.

What's more, with social media sites affecting some of the world's most important decision making processes - Barack Obama's prevalence on Facebook and Twitter is just one example - Google might find that creating new rules for social media is another way to extend its far reaching influence.

Will Google take note of the social media saturation and develop a "social filter" to allow a wider diversity of websites ranking? Arguably the need is it there, but only Google knows for sure.

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Presidential campaign reveals YouTube to be primary political source

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 12:00:00 GMT

Since it's inception in 2005, YouTube has long been the place to go for weird and wonderful videos from around the world. However, during this year's presidential campaign, the online video network became what many video-happy people considered to be the primary source for the latest political news and views, with every speech, ad and opinion from the pundits being posted on the site.

The 2008 Presidential Election was the first time that YouTube, and many other web 2.0 portals and communities, could find out how much influence the site could wield in national politics. While videos of politicians making blunders had been popular on the site for some time, those in charge of the site decided that YouTube would be best served by seriously engaging voters, candidates and the various mainstream media outlets.

According to the New York Times, the political team at YouTube came up with YouChoose in 2006, a section of the site especially created for showing video clips from candidates, which was launched in February of 2007. Despite initial fears from candidates that teaming up with YouTube would only have negative consequences, 7 out of 16 people who ran for the presidency ended up announcing their candidacy on YouTube. And as campaigns continued to heat up, many candidates virtually gave up control of the context of their videos and allowed YouTube users to have free reign.

Almost every candidate was met by YouTube's head of news and politics, Steve Grove, at the start of the campaign season. Candidates were encouraged to start their own YouTube channel, which could also help candidates raise money for their campaigns by allowing users to donate money via Google Checkout.

While YouTube was initially presented as a way for candidates to appeal to the "youth vote" (in much the same way as MTV had done in the 2000 and 2004 elections), the site eventually ended up dramatically affecting the perception of candidates across multiple demographics. The reliance of many on YouTube to keep up with the political occurrences also showed that nearly all those assisting in candidates' campaigns need skills with digital technology, as the New York Times reports that editing and uploading video is now more important to a campaign that direct mail.

YouTube was also enlisted as a partner to CNN for two presidential debates, at which some YouTube users had their questions aired and answered on CNN. Key moments in the election campaign such as the New Hampshire and Pennsylvania primaries were also followed closely by YouTube and its users.

Eventually all candidates opened YouTube accounts and uploaded thousands of videos, with Barack Obama's channel currently containing 1821 videos while John McCain's features 330 videos. The BarackObamadotcom account uploaded more than 150 videos in the final days of the campaign, how responsible becoming a winner on YouTube was in helping the President Elect become a political winner too is hard to ascertain. But one thing is for sure, future political campaigns will ignore the latest developments in digital media at their peril!

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Dr Google, I presume

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 12:00:00 GMT

It looks like the Mountain View giant is not content with dealing with online viruses these days - now Google is set to predict the spread of flu out in the non-virtual world. According to The Guardian, the search engine has set its massive data-collecting power the task of collating information about the disease and has launched a site that claims to be able to raise the alarm over flu outbreaks up to two weeks before the existing public services.

As the search engine continues to advance in so many disparate fields, you can't help thinking someone out there is saying 'anything you can do, Google can do better'.

Using the technology developed for Google Trends, Google has created Google Flu Trends - a system that analyses various flu-related search terms across America. Google engineers claim that the resulting aggregated trends give them the potential ability to predict rises in flu cases and that they were a strong indicator of flu levels in America.

Google compared its results to statistics filed by the US centres for Disease Control over the last five years to ascertain the potential accuracy of its data. Science journal Nature will publish the results of Google's comparisons with official health statistics.

According to The Guardian, Jeremy Ginsberg, a Google engineer involved in developing the system said: "We wanted to step back and see if we couldn't model a real-world phenomenon using search query data . . . We found we could highly accurately estimate what the flu activity levels would be in subsequent years."

The new move from Google adds to its previous investigations into digital detection technology designed to apply online information to public health mapping. It is already exploring ways of combining collated health information with other services, such as Google Maps, and looking into a tool that allows users to store personal health information on Google sites.

Google, often in hot water for its privacy policies, has insisted that there are no privacy issues involved in its new offering as the trends are aggregated using millions of anonymous searches. But, as it hopes to extend the service to other countries and potentially other illnesses, the search engine will be well advised to take the temperature of civil liberty groups as well as compiling the amount of people looking to lower theirs.

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Google continues to push forward free web analytics

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 12:00:00 GMT

Previous articles from bigmouthmedia have speculated about the future of web analytics. The web analytics landscape changed considerably with the introduction of Google Analytics a few years ago. Google Analytics started out as a user friendly analytics package that was robust enough for small to medium sized sites but didn't really have the capabilities to compete with more complex packages on larger corporate sites.

Yahoo's purchase of IndexTools and recent launch of the package as Yahoo Analytics for free was expected to give expensive web analytics packages a run for their money. The major advantage that Yahoo's analytics package had over Google's was ease of segmentation, the ability to break down and analyse data in custom segments.

Yahoo is going through a long process of releasing IndexTools. Currently it's available to certain users but has not enjoyed a full public release. This delay may have cost it dear as Google released new segmentation capabilities among a whole host of new features in Google Analytics this week - meaning Google shares most of the same features as IndexTools and a few extra ones too.

Not for the first time, it looks as though Yahoo may have lost out to Google, who are generally much quicker on the ball. It now looks like Google is the obvious choice for websites looking to get more insight from their analytics. Not only is Google Analytics now more powerful, it is still much easier to use than IndexTools or more established (not to mention more expensive) analytics packages such as WebTrends and Omniture.

Setting up advanced segments on Google Analytics is a breeze and, even for the most analytically challenged, building custom reports or viewing data in new and innovative ways is easier than ever. If you still need to be convinced, consult Avinash Kaushik, Google's "analytics evangelist". His blog offers great ideas on using the new segmentation features.

It's possible that, with their strong client base and comprehensive features, some of the better, costlier packages will continue to do well in the analytics market. But it seems inevitable now, especially in these lean economic times, that some of the poorer but expensive packages may fall by the wayside.

Never one to rest on its laurels, Google has also just launched Google Analytics for Google Apps, which will give Google Apps administrators tools to monitor employee use of Google Docs and Google Sites. The application will provide visual representation of staff's use of the various Google sites, providing insight that's similar in nature to Google Analytics' current offering to webmasters with external sites. This will allow companies to monitor how their staff reacts to business decisions, view what resources staff are using and check on staff searches.

As with most of Google's new products and services, questions are likely to be asked as to whether the search engine is gaining too much access to information and what the long term consequences of this might be. Still, there is no doubting that the products it is providing are of the highest quality - and, better still, they're free.

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