Yahoo! Search pulling away from Google; Bing nowhere
AdvertisementRecently iBridge Research Plus conducted a survey, reported on by japan.internet.com, into search engines.
Demographics
On the 5th of February 2010 300 members of the iBridge monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 51.0% of the sample were female, 18.7% in their twenties, 33.3% in their thirties, 26.3% in their forties, 12.7% in their fifties, and 9.0% in their sixties.
I’d never heard of 百度, Hyakudo before, but a Google (what else!) search informed me that it’s actually read Baidu, the Japanese version of China’s top search engine.
Research results
First, 289 people had a home computer. They were asked the following.
Q1: Which search engines have you ever used from your home computer? (Sample size=289, multiple answer)
Votes Percentage Yahoo! 268 92.7% 227 78.5% goo 149 51.6% Infoseek 121 41.9% MSN 96 33.2% BIGLOBE 93 32.2% nifty 70 24.2% livedoor 56 19.4% Bing 10 3.5% Baidu 9 3.1% NAVER 3 1.0% AltaVista 3 1.0% Inktomi 1 0.3% AlltheWeb 0 0.0% Teoma 0 0.0% Other 27 9.3% Q2: In the last year, which search engines have you mainly used from your home computer? (Sample size=289, multiple answer)
Votes Percentage Yahoo! 256 88.6% 190 65.7% Infoseek 78 27.0% goo 62 21.5% BIGLOBE 41 14.2% MSN 39 13.5% nifty 16 5.5% livedoor 12 4.2% Baidu 7 2.4% Bing 6 2.1% NAVER 0 0.0% Other 24 8.3% None 1 0.3% For the next question, the sample size was not noted.
Q3: Which search engines do you mainly use from work? (Sample size=not stated, multiple answer)
Votes Yahoo! 117 84 Infoseek 17 goo 12 MSN 9 Bing 4 BIGLOBE 4 livedoor 3 nifty 2 Baidu 0 NAVER 0 Other 5 None 24
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Thanks for the interesting stats, though I’m not sure whether a direct comparison between Yahoo! and Google figures tells the whole picture. How many of the portal sites use Google or return results based on Google? I’m pretty sure goo’s search results are based on Google. Similarly, BIGLOBE’s results are ‘enhanced’ by Google.
Wasaweb makes a good point.
Also it is worth noting that numbers for Yahoo may be inflated since a lot of Japanese people use the Yahoo portal for checking news, weather, email and so on.
There is some research which suggests that on a like for like comparison (i.e. actual number of searches) Google Japan’s numbers are actually pretty close to Yahoo Japan.
Agree with Wasaweb
I never have been able to understand the difference between Yahoo Japan and the rest of Yahoo but…
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Yahoo (YHOO) just posted two videos of Carol Bartz explaining why its now regulator-approved plan to outsource search to Microsoft does NOT mean the company is out of search. http://bit.ly/ctAckh