Of course, there are plenty of factors that could be contributing here. For one, Business Insider is pushing out a ton of articles these days, and on a variety of topics. It’s not all tech, or even all business at this point. It’s pretty much become an all-purpose news source, leaving the name “Business Insider” a little misleading. That’s not to say they don’t cover business well, but visit the site, and you’ll find sections on Tech, Media, Sports, Lifestyle, Politics, Travel, Etc. The content will still often have a business angle, but not always.

This kind of branching out into other content areas by previously niche publications has drawn some criticism. In fact, a TechCrunch writer recently blasted Mashable for this kind of thing (which I defended here). Interestingly enough, Business Insider has also been known to syndicate articles from other sources, including TechCrunch itself.

Business Insider puts out a ton of content. They seem to be going for almost a Huffington Post-type thing. In terms of unique visitors, it seems to be playing out well for them so far.

It’s worth noting that Compete’s data is all U.S. and has been subject to its own share of criticism. Last week, we ran a piece, in which Compete’s Damian Roskill, Managing Director of Marketing, compared Compete data and Google Analytics data to Apples and Oranges.

We reached out to Compete to discuss this a bit, and Damian Roskill, Managing Director, Marketing at Compete tells us, “It’s really like comparing apples and oranges – both methodologies have their strengths and their weaknesses.  Google Analytics doesn’t actually track people – it tracks cookies.  This means that when people change computers, or delete their cookies, you can have double counting that goes on.”

Compete’s methodology has four basic components. They are (as described in a Compete white paper):

1. Multi-source panel – combines both recruited panelists and licensed clickstream data from partners, resulting in a very large and representative online consumer panel;
2. Harmonization algorithms – proprietary processes and technology that work together to integrate Compete’s multiple data sources into a unified online
   consumer panel;
3. Sophisticated normalization techniques – unique processes that weight, calibrate and project metrics across panel sources resulting in accurate base audience measurement data;
4. Metrics that matter – analytics on site visitation, audience profiles, media exposure, search term usage, cross-shopping, conversion, competitive behaviors, and audience segmentation

“In contrast, a panel is a sample-based approach – we track about 2 million US consumers – a percentage of the total internet audience here in the US – and then we use computer modeling to project behavior from our panel to the general internet audience,” says Roskill. “The upside is that a person is a person – you don’t have the double-counting.  The downside is that you can sometimes get undercounting of smaller websites.”

“Also notice that we are currently only doing US consumers – so people often send us a Google Analytics number that includes all international users as well as US consumers – the two aren’t comparable in that way either.”

Certainly an important point to note.
 
“Bottom line, the approaches are complementary rather than either/or – what should make sense is that the two methodologies should be similar directionally.  But comparing the numbers doesn’t really provide much value.”

In my experience, they generally are similar directionally in most cases.
 
“What we think can be meaningful is combining the two approaches – essentially using a cookie-based approach and combine it with a panel based approach and use them to provide validation for each other,” says Roskill.

The fact is that you can compare data from any number of analytics tools, and you’re going to get different results. It’s when they tell dramatically different stories that you need to investigate further. Luckily there are resources explaining how data is collected. Compete’s white paper, for example explains its methodology. Google Analytics has an entire help center, and there are plenty of articles on the web discussing it.

With all the value that Facebook is creating, is it safe to say that it is becoming more valuable than a brand’s own website? Let us know your thoughts.

A recent study from Compete addressed this issue in part by comparing the extent to which consumers visited the Facebook pages of certain brands to how often they visited each brand’s own website. Among the 40+ brands that were analyzed, Walmart, State Farm Insurance, and BMW had the most unique visits to their Facebook pages.

But, in terms of comparing the traffic, iTunes’ Facebook page received more traffic than its domain did. Lincoln Merrihew, Managing Director at Compete, told us that Apple is using its iTunes Facebook page as a “storefront.” Going forward, he believes that more brands will use Facebook in this same way.

So, what does this information mean? According to Merrihew, brands should definitely pay attention to Facebook, if they aren’t already. However, he also says that they need to consider the quality of the traffic. When brands drive people to their Facebook page, are the consumers looking to make a purchase, or are they just there to look around?

In other words, he believes businesses need to have clear goals for what they want their Facebook pages to accomplish. The iTunes page, for example, is set up like a store for users to download music. Progressive Insurance, on the other hand, has a Facebook page for its spokesperson Flo that is more for engagement and relationship building.

“Everyone wants to be on Facebook, [and] everyone wants to use it, but then [it's] understanding the quality of what you’re getting,” said Merrihew.

He also said that, as brands establish their strategy, they should consider if their customers are more comfortable on Facebook or on their website. Once this is figured out, a business can determine where it should be focusing its traffic efforts.

Social media strategist Sally Falkow recently wrote about this issue and pointed out that while social channels would likely be a leader in online business communications in the future, they still would need to be connected to a website. She wrote, “So it’s not that you no longer need a website, it’s just that if you don’t integrate social features and connect your social content with your corporate website it will become irrelevant.”

So, even though opinions are probably divided on this issue, it is something that businesses need to think about and plan for in regards to the future.

"With over 450 mobile devices in North America and an average of 10 new phone launches each week, how do shoppers decide which phone is right for them? How do marketers influence these purchase decisions?" asks the Google Tech Team, previewing the report.

There are some very interesting numbers in it. Here are a few: 

- At the beginning of the purchase process, 42% did not have a a specific carrier preference, while 78% did not have an OEM preference

- 5% bought a new smartphone because they wanted more features, while 22% bought because they saw a new phone they "had to have"

- 62% of consumers who searched for a newly launched mobile device purchased one, and the average consumer conducts 13 searches throughout the purchase process

- There was a 29% increase in the number of online resources used in research

- 63% of people who bought phones in stores researched their purchase online

There is plenty more statistical and visual data within the report. View it here.

About 47% of T-Mobile smartphone users use their phones to find local branches and ATMs, while 45% of AT&T users and 36% of Sprint users reported doing this (see chart #1 for data).

According to the survey, 34% of T-Mobile users use their phones to pay bills, followed by AT&T users (31%), Sprint users (23%) and Verizon users (21%).

While the numbers were lower, 19% of T-Mobile smartphone owners used their phones to buy/sell stocks. 11% of AT&T and Verizon users also bought/sold stocks, while only 8% of Sprint users reported buying/selling stocks.

73% of smartphone owners reported using their devices for at least one shopping-related activity during the holiday season.

Currently, 38% of smartphone owners conduct leisure travel research on their mobile devices (at least some of the time), according to the findings. This compares to 27% using mobile for leisure travel bookings, 20% using for business travel research, and 15% using for business travel bookings.

The findings present an interesting look at how people are using their devices to interact with the mobile web and make decisions.

Compete shared some data with us that emphasizes just how big Facebook is, and just how seriously it should be taken. If these stats from Facebook weren’t enough for you, Compete points out that Facebook has surpassed Yahoo as the #2 site online in the U.S. in terms of unique visitors, just under Google.

In December, according to Compete, Facebook’s unique visitors in the U.S. had increased by over 121%. That’s pretty incredible, because I seem to recall Facebook being pretty popular in late 2008 too.

In terms of social media sites, none of the others even come close in the U.S. – not even the world’s second largest search engine, YouTube: 

So Facebook is already bigger than the second largest search engine. Add to that, the fact that search on Facebook itself is rising. According to comScore, Facebook’s search query percentage increased by 13% from December to January, growing to 395 million searches:

Greg Sterling notes, the numbers in the chart "are likely internal searches on Facebook for content or friends, rather than web search. This is not the same thing as people conducting searches on Google, Yahoo or Bing more generally. And 13 percent growth is certainly strong, but not "phenomenal.’"

Facebook’s search feature, which has been emphasized somewhat with the latest redesign, lets users search people, pages, groups, apps, events, posts by friends, posts by everyone, OR web results. Sterling makes the case that internal Facebook searches are different from web searches one would perform on Google, but in some ways, Facebook search simply goes places that Google doesn’t (while also going Places that Google does via the Bing-powered web search).

Facebook is almost like its own web in some ways, and that is becoming truer all the time as Facebook gets more of users’ time spent online (which it is doing through status updates, news, apps/games, videos, music, events, and possibly email in the future…we also suggest Facebook consider adding blogging to the mix).

Look at this newly released data from Nielsen about time spent online. In January (in the U.S.), Facebook users averaged 7 hours a month on the site. As a point of comparison, Google users spent about 2 hours.

In some ways, that doesn’t really take anything away from Google, because Google’s job as a search engine is to get you where you need to be to find what you’re looking for. However, Facebook users appear to be finding plenty of stuff they are looking for along with stuff they didn’t know they were looking for, as well as just hanging out and being entertained. With Facebook’s search feature, they’re able to find what they’re looking for without having to leave Facebook until the search result (at least theoretically).

Whether you think Facebook’s search growth is "phenomenal" or not, you can’t overlook the fact that more people are using the search feature, and some unknown percentage of that is pulling from Bing. Maybe this should be construed as a good reason not to overlook your Bing SEO efforts. Maybe it’s also another reason why Facebook should be viewed as one of Google’s key competitors (along with Microsoft, Yahoo, and increasingly Apple).  Actually, Sterling points out that Google recently listed Facebook officially as a competitor for the first time in its annual 10K filing.

Google is seemingly going after the market that Facebook dominates with the launch of Google Buzz, but status updates are just part of the big picture. Search is just part of the big picture. It’s all about getting the user’s attention, is it not? Here are some tips for running a good Facebook page.

What do you think? Discuss here.

"Search begins with the choice of search engine," said David Sable, vice chairman and COO of Wunderman. "What this means if you are managing a brand is this: you need to know how consumers relate to Bing, Yahoo! or Google and how that reflects on you."

Loyal users of Bing, Yahoo and Google were found to have distinct characteristics that benefit some brands more than others.

The search experience on different search engines offers different results, with some being more relevant to the consumer than others. This contributes to overall customer and brand awareness. If the search results satisfy the needs of the consumer, then the search engine has greater appeal to that potential customer leading to a deeper connection to the brand and the search engine.

"This research demonstrates that marketers have a real choice to make when formulating search strategies," said Shane Atchison, CEO of ZAAZ.

"The search engine acts as a kind of ‘train’ on the Internet. Each train provides a different set of unique results or ‘destinations.’ Consumer preference for a specific train demonstrates a unique demographic and psychographic profile."

The study found two reasons why different brands do better with different search engines:

•     It’s About Who You Are: The demographic and psychographic profile of each loyal search engine user is different. Bing users, for example, tend to be mostly from the tip of the adoption curve (innovators and early adopters) where Yahoo! and Google’s passengers tend to be middle majority (see accompanying chart). 
•     It’s About the Road You Take:  Each search engine delivers a different result, whether paid for or earned. In the brands and vertical categories studied (automotive, travel, retail, and wireless), each search engine demonstrated different degrees of consumer engagement ranging from visiting to finally purchasing. 

Related Articles:

> How Google Rates Links from Facebook and Twitter

> How Press Releases Can Be Great For Search

> Link Building for Bing Rankings: Dos and Don’ts

Six of the top 20 highest growth website categories in December were travel and weather related.  The airport travel category attracted 40 percent more unique visitors in December (2.1 million) than the previous month.  News sites related to weather and traffic also saw big growth, increasing visitors by 34.8 percent over November to reach 52.5 million unique visitors.

Weather.com still has a clear hold on the online weather market. The popular forecast site attracted 33.6 million unique visitors in December, a 46.7 percent increase month-over-month and 22.1 percent growth over 2008. Wundergroud.com also continued steady growth, reaching 6.98 million unique visitors in December, which represents 19.3 percent growth year-over-year.

Shipping services attracted consumer’s attention in December as they logged on to track shipped packages and research shipping rates. UPS.com led the online shipping sites with 25 million unique visitors, a 51.9 percent increase month-over-month and 17 percent year-over-year growth. USPS.com trailed, attracting 23.4 million unique visitors, while 15.5 million unique visitors clicked on FedEx.com.

While the top 50 websites in December once again remained largely unchanged, there were two notable moves among the group. eBay moved up the ranks to take the number five spot on the most popular site list. With 88.5 million unique visitors in December, the site was previously ranked number eight edged out Amazon (85.9 million unique visitors) by growing 19.6 percent month-over-month.
 

Related Articles:

> The Top 50 Websites in the US

> Online Shoppers Have Bigger Holiday Budgets Than Offline Shoppers

> Compete Builds "Twitter Down" Case

Andrew Pearlman – who is himself a satisfied Hotmail user – wrote earlier, "I am happy to report that MSN Hotmail still holds a slight lead in the number of Unique Visitors over Gmail every month."

It’s done so for quite some time, too.  Pearlman continued, "Below is a trend line for the previous 3 years, keep in mind that the domain for hotmail.com has changed over time and in late ’07 the sub-domain moved from msn.com to live.com."

Of course, if you eye the July 2009 to September 2009 region of the graph, the odds of Hotmail staying in the lead start to look a little slim.  Nonetheless, if Bing continues to become more successful and Microsoft does a decent job of tying all its products together, it’s hard to say what might happen.

At the least, this should be a sign to not give odd ("you’re backwards") or rude ("you’re blowing me off") looks to people who supply Hotmail addresses.

Related Articles:

> 10 Reasons Social Media Isn’t Replacing Email

> Google Adds Easy Way To Merge Duplicate Contacts In Gmail

> Offline Use Now Part Of Everybody’s Gmail

While m-commerce is set for strong growth in 2010, consumers are still more likely to abandon mobile purchasing on sites that are not optimized for the on-the-go experience, similar to shopping cart abandonment in the early days of ecommerce.

Compete’s Q3 Smartphone Intelligence survey found that eight percent of smartphone owners that tried to purchase a product on their device were unable to do so. Nearly half (45%) of those that abandoned the process said that they did so because the site would not load, and an additional 38 percent left the site because it was not developed specifically for smartphone users.

"Retailers are beginning to recognize that smartphone use is no longer limited to an exclusive group of tech savvy consumers," said Danielle Nohe, director of consumer technologies for Compete.

"As these devices proliferate – and people grow more comfortable transacting, site owners must redesign around mobile shopping ease-of-use. We see this as a win for both consumers and businesses."

Key findings from the survey include:
   

• 37 percent of smartphone owners have purchased something non-mobile with their handset in the past 6 months.
•     19 percent of total smartphone owners have purchased music from their device, 14 percent have purchased books, DVDs, or video games and 12 percent have purchased movie tickets.
•     The most popular mobile shopping-related activities are still research related – 41 percent of iPhone users and 43 percent of Android users are most likely to check sale prices at alternative locations from their mobile phones while they are shopping.
•     The second most likely activity is accessing consumer reviews, with 39 percent of iPhone owners and 31 percent of Android owners investigating reviews from their handset before they purchase.

Related Articles:

>Google Launches Custom Search For Smartphones

>Buy A Blackberry From Walmart Get A $100 Gift Card

>Apple And LG Rank High In Consumer Satisfaction