comScore will provide more data on searches at retail sites
Internet measurement firm comScore has announced it will report a broader array of search activity, including data on searches on major retail sites like Amazon and eBay. The new product, called qSearch 2.0, also will report on activity on social network sites and provide more international data.
Instead of tracking searches on just the five largest search engines, comScore now will track the top 50 web sites worldwide in terms of search activity. That will include major retail sites and the shopping areas of major search engines, as well as travel sites like Expedia and social networking sites Wikipedia, MySpace and YouTube.
“With the continued evolution of the search market, it has become clear there is a need to expand the way we think about search,” says James Lamberti, comScore senior vice president of search solutions. “qSearch 2.0 gives the most comprehensive and accurate view of the entire search market by including all forms of search that are being monetized currently or could be monetized in the future.”
Among the top 50 sites to be tracked are three retail sites—Amazon, eBay and Overstock.com, as well as the shopping portals of the five major U.S. search engines. Amazon is No. 1 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide and Overstock.com No. 25. EBay is not ranked because many sellers account for the sales on the site.
ComScore plans to further expand in the coming months its research into major vertical markets, including retail and travel, by tracking activity on more sites, says Steve Dennen, senior director of product management. For retailers, this will give them data they can use to benchmark their performance against that of competitors.
“If visitors to my site are clicking on two search results pages per search and my competitor is reporting 1.5 pages per search, perhaps my competitor is delivering more relevant results more quickly to the consumer,” Dennen says. The data comScore collects on the number of visits to a site, how many visitors conduct searches and how many searches take place can help retailers better understand their visitors’ intentions and engagement, and compare those metrics with those of competitors, he says.
Among other changes is greater international reporting. ComScore will now report search activity in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, China, and South Korea. More countries will be added, comScore says.
ComScore also is changing the way it measures the major search engines. For instance, it now will count searches initiated on affiliate sites that get directed to the search engines. Google’s traffic grew about 7% as a result of this change, a bigger increase than its competitors because it has the largest affiliate network, Dennen says.
The “expanded” search data also now counts when someone clicks on additional tabs on a search results page—such as maps or images—without entering another search term. The listing for Google also includes YouTube, the video-sharing site Google acquired last year, which had not been previously counted. ComScore will continue to provide a “core” search listing that is comparable to its previous measurement approach, for comparison with historical data.
Using the new “expanded” definition of search, Google sites (including YouTube) accounted for 55.2% of activity at the top five U.S. search engines, followed by Yahoo at 23.5%, Microsoft (MSN) 12.3%, Ask Network 4.7% and Time Warner Network (AOL) 4.4%.
The announcement by comScore comes a month after a major competitor, Nielsen/NetRatings, announced a significant change to its reports, saying it will collect data on time spent on a site and total sessions as a way to better capture activity on web sites offering video and dynamically changing content.
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