GaryBurtka.com

 February is typically a recessed month in search volume (as it only has 28 days), even though it has high profile search events like valentine's Day and the Oscars. None the less, search query volume fell 1% in February from January. 

 

As you can see from the Compete.com graphs, the dip in search query volume did not impact Google's ability to increase its market share. After hovering around a 70% market share for the previous 6 months, Google increased its market share 2.2% in February bringing Google to a 72.4% total market share.    

 

 

 

 

Ask, AOL, Yahoo, and MSN/Live all lost incremental amounts of market share in February. Ask did see a large increase in Referrals which now seats them at the top of the Referral share with Google and Yahoo respectively.

 

 

 

So what does all of this mean to us? Well if you are in a digital marketing role, you may also have noticed that search query volume as a whole continues to rise at a maddening pace comparing months year-over-year. So while the economy may be a cause to a lot less conversions for some clients, the digital opportunity continues to grow amidst these sour times.