Simplistic comScore Search Numbers
Posted on March 22, 2008
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There's a lot of quantative measurement of the search market, including from Efficient Frontier, but as with all data points you should consider what the numbers mean, if they mean anything at all, before pronouncing judgement.
Take for example comScore's search engine rankings report for February, which declares that search queries are down across the board. Jefferies & Co analyst Youssef Squali is quoted as saying, "Google's month-over-month 5 percent decline is a little surprising, but all of the major Web search names were down." The comScore data showed Google having 6.14bn US queries in January, down to 5.86bn in February.
February is described by comScore as 'seasonally soft'. You or I would describe February more simply as 'shorter'. Two days shorter than January, given that it's a leap year. Yes, that's right – those search query numbers don't take into account that February is 6.5% shorter than January. In that context, a drop of only 5% doesn't seem so bad does it? In fact, it means that the average number of queries per day has increased in February. Panic over!
Credit to Patrick Altoft at e-consultancy who has a sharp eye for this kind of nonsense.
