Google’s Growth Slowing as Others Grow
I came up with this hypothesis nearly a year ago, and am now just getting around to putting forth evidence.
The idea is this:
If you compare the top 10 most visited sites from 2005 to 2007, you’ll see a major trend: a shift towards “destination” sites.
What I mean by that is that, for example, people are less likely to go to Google and search for “apartments in San Francisco”, or “cleaning services in San Francisco”. They’ll either go straight to Craigslist.org, yelp.com, cityspace.com, or another destination.
This is because as people become more familiar with the web’s flora, they don’t need search to guide them to obvious destinations. So they use search increasingly for eclectic reasons and less for simple navigation.
Similarly, if someone wants to learn about a person they just read about in the news, they are increasingly likely to just go straight to Wikipedia (#8 now, was nowhere near that in 2005).
In 2005, the top 5 sites were all search engines. Now there are only 4 search engines in the top 10, and we have 4 social networking sites (none in 2005).
I’ve joked about a potential Onion article, titled, “People Find Everything: Google Declares Bankruptcy”.
Ok, so that is never going to happen.
But look at the graph below and you’ll see a direct correlation between Google’s traffic plateau and the increase in traffic to Craigslist, Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace. And there is a long tail of sites like yelp.com also slowing down Google’s growth.
Of course, one can argue that Google owns YouTube and MySpace, but my point is not about share of voice, but rather that people are jumping right to destination sites. Google, as a search engine,
is not competing with other search engines so much as it is competing with destinations.
The inflection point is in 2006.
January 6th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
[...] facebook, myspace, craigslist, yelp, youtube etc. You can read more about his theory on his Mostly SEO Blog . I agree completely with his theory, but I will take it one step [...]
January 7th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
OK from an advertisers standpoint…
Google’s initial bid price for keyword searches is a little crazy… although it’s a supply and demand thing… For a good number of our keyboard buys, they are averaging $10/keyword. MSN and Yahoo ask for bids of $.10 to $.50 for the SAME keywords.
But here’s the kicker… we get 2x to 3x MORE click traffic from Yahoo and MSN than we do from Google… and the lead/click quality is about the same.
Yes, Google gets more search traffic than MSN or Yahoo… but based on price and click throughs MSN and Yahoo are delivering better initial results.
I can’t say we’ll not use Google’s ad program as they still reign supreme for search, but it’s hard to ignore the fact that as an advertiser, other sites can deliver keyword buys that perform better.
January 7th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Good point Percy.
A presentation I saw recently showed that Yahoo and MSN have a much higher conversion rate for a sample of large brands (a lot of commerce & electronics).
My explanation is that MAYBE Google users are more likely to do extensive research, whereas the MSN user (like my mom) just finds something that looks good, pulls the trigger, then goes back into the kitchen to bake the neighbor’s kids cookies.
January 7th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
[...] Craig’s Mostly Search Blog search marketing when I feel like it « Google’s Growth Slowing as Others Grow [...]
January 8th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
C: I’ll re-post when I get some more data. Right now I’ve got landing pages and tracking for each of the search engines and keyowrd campaigns… and I’m watching conversion from the initial click to the “thank you for responding” page.
The product I am marketing is a B2B SAAS product, so the click responses are even more intriguing because they aren’t “low-research” items like a TV or stereos - which house person “mom” might click, read and make a decision to buy or go leave and search some more.
Even my boss is pleasantly surprised as the initial performance figures from Yahoo and MSN… and he’s the ex-CMO of Web Trends.
January 15th, 2008 at 7:48 am
[...] for their specific info needs, leaving Google behind like the high school boyfriend you outgrew. Destination sites pose another potential threat to Google’s growth, according to Red Bricks Media’s own Craig Hordlow. He sees Google’s growth slowing [...]