Nielsen: Total Searches Dropped In August

By Doug Caverly - Tue, 09/23/2008 - 11:32

Ten percent decrease compared to July

Nielsen Online has released data regarding the August search market, and certain persistent trends were defied in small ways. But a really interesting deviation popped up as the overall number of searches fell.

About 8.0 billion searches were performed in July (7.997 billion if you want to get specific). During August, this number dropped to 7.2 billion, so a month-over-month loss of ten percent occurred. On a year-over-year scale, the decrease looks more like 7.7 percent. Not good, or at least not normal.

Fewer Searches Performed In August
(Credit: Nielsen Ratings)

Did some big Internet outage take place that affected individuals forgot to mention? Ike hadn't hit yet in August. Or maybe the back-to-school crowd got overwhelmed by homework? Feel free to toss out other scenarios using the comments section, as we're stumped.

Anyway, as for the other aspects of Nielsen's latest report, Google defied expectations by losing 0.2 percent of its market share since July. Yahoo, meanwhile, managed to grow its share by 0.7 percent. Only Microsoft played according to tradition and saw its number dip by 1.2 percent.

At least this strange search recession has created a bit of excitement. Stay tuned to find out what the September stats look like.

News Tags: Search, Nielsen Online

About the author:
Doug is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest eBusiness news.

3 Comments

By Jerry (WPN reader) - Thu, 09/25/2008 - 10:04

economy & searches

Since a large number of searches are customers searching for products and services the decline in searches seems to make sense as people stop spending (or even thinking of spending) during this economic downtown. With a quick look at the auto industry declines it becomes apparent that consumers are in a holding pattern. One would expect that September , with the hurricane and economic woes, could be even worse. However, it will be interesting to see if all of the news and political searches do not offset the expected decline in consumer searches in September. My prediction - they will.

By Golf Blog (WPN reader) - Wed, 09/24/2008 - 00:54

It's the Economy

I honestly believe the sliding economy is forcing more people to spend less. Therefore search traffic will take a dip as well. Although I am taken back by the large drop.

By Adam - Creare Web Design (WPN reader) - Tue, 09/23/2008 - 12:17

Maybe as websites become

Maybe as websites become more immediately accessible as applications on desktops or iPhones, or as browsers become more sophisticated (bookmarks etc) searches are becoming less important.