Search Engine of Choice by the Search Companies
Recently there was a blog entry that came out named What Search Engines Do Search Engine Companies Use? over at Inside Google. It was that blog entry that sprung a topic of discussion over at Search Engine Watch forums named Should Yahoo employees search elsewhere?.
The extreme point in the entry was this quote; “Finally, at Yahoo, 68.9% of employees use Yahoo, but a still-strong 29.8% use Google (compare that to Google’s 100% loyalty).”
Jeremy Zawodny said I don’t believe the search numbers…. First off, Jeremy questions the data collection page which reads; “There is some data that we do not aggregate. For example, we do not collect information on search terms used. We also do not aggregate information on what specific pages or websites people visit.” And second, he makes a nice point with this remark; “Anyway, the next problem I see is what that 100% Google figure. That seems to imply that Google never bothers to check out the competition. Is that really true? I know for a fact that it’s not.”
The author of the original blog entry then commented on Jeremy’s entry saying;
Well, VisitorVille compiles the data through visitors to the websites who contract it for user data. That means all of the data is based on sites visited through search engines. In turn, that means that only successful searches are counted, not test searches, because test searches rarely result in a click through. This means that Google employees who search for websites all use Google, and they only use other engines for testing, while Yahoo employees do use Google to find stuff.
–
Barry Schwartz is the Editor of Search Engine Roundtable and President of RustyBrick, Inc., a Web services firm specializing in customized online technology that helps companies decrease costs and increase sales.
I find the statement by VisitorVille in reply to Jeremy’s critique of their data even more of a farce. I’d like to know how in the world VisitorVille (a company no one has ever even heard of) can differentiate between a “test” search and a real search. It’s not like everytime a Google employee does a test search on another engine that they are going to report it to VisitorVille.
Is this company really serious? I thought April Fool’s day was April 1st?
I also find it very hard to take stock in this “research”.