With respect to Ask (Dr. Pepper) and AOL (fruit juices), the duopoly created by the Microsoft/Yahoo search alliance makes U.S. search a tussle between Google and Microhoo for supremacy.
comScore’s August data was released tonight and shows a minor fluctuation with Google dropping 0.4 points in market share, which were seemingly picked up Yahoo and Microsoft. If anyone you know says 4/10ths of one percent feel free to heckle them for weeks until they conceded that the change was actually 0.6%.
In the soft drink world, Coke (40% plus market share), Pepsi (30% plus) and Dr. Pepper / Snapple (15% plus) effectively control the market. Except that the companies carving out a niche in the gaps often grow profitable or threaten to and are gobbled up.
That’s the payday Fuze and Odwallla hit when Coca-Cola bought them for a combined price of more than $400 million within a relatively short 6 year span.
Your takeaway as a small business leader is that you better decide whether you like Coke products, Pepsi products or both for your business. For you that means Google AdWords and Microsoft’s adCenter if you’re doing any kind of search advertising.
But there are new players out there. Bottled water (aka Facebook) is all the rage and smart companies are starting to see profitable direct response results from the social network.
And the comScore data also shows that Ask and AOL combined for 964 million searches in August. As a marketer I call that number “nearly one billion” and despite the manner in which we toss around large numbers, one billion of anything in one month is big business.
So have your Coke or your Pepsi or switch between the two.
Try some bottled water when it’s appropriate.
And if Dr. Pepper, 7-Up or fruit juices are on sale, you may want to stock up on some of those.
The comparison is overly simplistic, but the point is valid. Search advertising is now a Google-Bing world that will control more than 80% of US search engine actions this fall and winter. Other options exist, but they may not be direct substitutes.
Try them all. Don’t get in a rut.
US Search Engine Market Share
| comScore Explicit Core Search Share Report* August 2010 vs. July 2010 Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations Source: comScore qSearch | |||
| Core Search Entity | Explicit Core Search Share (%) | ||
| Jul-10 | Aug-10 | Point Change | |
| Total Explicit Core Search | 100.0% | 100.0% | N/A |
| Google Sites | 65.8% | 65.4% | -0.4 |
| Yahoo! Sites | 17.1% | 17.4% | 0.3 |
| Microsoft Sites | 11.0% | 11.1% | 0.1 |
| Ask Network | 3.8% | 3.8% | 0.0 |
| AOL LLC Network | 2.3% | 2.3% | 0.0 |
Chart: comScore qSearch analysis