comScore has released its ‘explicit’ U.S. search data for January of this year and while Google and Microsoft Bring’s search share continues to grow, Yahoo’s share dropped both year over year and month over month. This comes after Bing overtook Yahoo in terms of search queries for the first time in December. While Bing grew slightly from December 2011 to January, Google reached its highest share since December 2010 this past month.
Google search queries increased 6% year over year in January, to 66.2%, compared with 65.9% in December 2011 and 65.6% in January 2011. Bing queries increased 21% year over year in January to 15.2%, compared with 15.1% in December 2011 and 13.1% in January 2011. Yahoo queries are on a downward spiral, decreasing 8% year over year in January to 14.1%, compared with 14.5% in December 2011, 15.1% in November 2011 and 16.1% in January 2011. Yikes.
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comScore just released its monthly mobile numbers, which charts smartphone usage from U.S. consumers for the three month period ending in December 2011. For the period, 234 million Americans age 13 and older used mobile devices, which is in line with the previous period’s usage. With respect to smartphone usage, 97.9 million (up from 91.4 million people in the previous period) people in the U.S. used smartphones during the three months ending in December, representing 40 percent of all mobile subscribers.
Google Android continued to be the most popular smartphone platform with 47.3 percent market share, up 2.5 percentage points from September. Apple took the second position, growing 2.2 percentage points to grab 29.6 percent of the smartphone market. RIM ranked third with 16 percent share, followed by Microsoft (4.7 percent) and Symbian (1.4 percent). → Read More
Audience measurement firm comScore has just released its U.S. online video rankings for December 2011. There are few surprises: Google’s YouTube is still king of the hill, while VEVO remains firmly in second place with roughly a third of Google Sites’ audience.
In total, comScore says 182 million U.S. users watched online video content in December 2011 for an average of 23.2 hours per viewer. The total U.S. Internet audience viewed 43.5 billion videos.
What caught my eye, however, was that Facebook dropped from third place in November 2011 to fifth place, trailing Yahoo and Viacom properties again, in a single month. → Read More
comScore has released its search data for December 2011, and Google continues to dominate in terms of share, with 65.9%, compared with 65.4% in November 2011 and 66.6% in December 2010. Year-over-year, queries increased 9.7% in December.
Yahoo queries came in with 14.5% share, compared with 15.1% in November 2011 and 16.0% in December 2010. Microsoft’s Bing’s share of searches in December was 15.1%, compared with 15% in November 2011 and 12.0% in December 2010. Since Bing powers Yahoo search, combined the two search engine’s share of searches was 29.6%, compared with 30.1% in November 2011. AOL queries declined 8% in December with 1.6% share. → Read More
comScore has just released its latest numbers regarding the mobile landscape here in the U.S., finding that Samsung is still the top OEM with a 25.6 percent marketshare, up just .3 percentage points from the three month period ending in August.
Meanwhile, Apple’s price drop on the iPhone 4 along with the introduction of the iPhone 4S has taken its share of the market from 9.8 percent to 11.2 percent.
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Online audience measurement and Web analytics companies Nielsen and comScore have settled their patent disputes, according to a joint statement released this morning.
Nielsen filed suit against its rival in March 2011, accusing comScore of infringing five patents it owns that relate to measuring and displaying online content. Sure enough, comScore countersued Nielsen just a few days later.
Now, the companies have seemingly buried the hatchet and come to this elaborate agreement:
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comScore just released its U.S. online holiday spending numbers for the season to-date, and as predicted, consumers continued to spend online in record amounts. For the first 39 days of the November to December 2011 holiday season, $24.6 billion has been spent online, which is a 15 percent increase compared to the same days last year.
The most recent week ending Dec. 9 reached $5.9 billion in spending, up 15 percent with 3 days surpassing $1 billion in spending. For the holiday season-to-date, six individual days have surpassed the billion dollar threshold, led by Cyber Monday at $1.25 billion. → Read More
comScore, a web and mobile data measurement company, is teaming up with Buddy Media, a company that provides Facebook Page and social media management tools to brands. The strategic partnership basically aims to give brands and agencies better data measurement on social analytics.
Buddy Media is best known for its all-in-one social media management system to help create, manage and track social campaigns on Facebook. With regard to Facebook, the platform lets brand managers agencies create, manage and track Facebook pages in a variety of languages to drive and increase user and brand engagement. → Read More
Mobile shopping is undoubtedly on the rise, and today comScore is releasing new data reinforcing this continuing trend. According to the data research and analysis firm, 38 percent of smartphone owners have used their phone to make a purchase at least once in the course of their device ownership.
The most popular products purchased on smartphones during the month of September included digital goods, clothing/accessories, tickets and daily deals. In September, two-thirds of all smartphone owners performed some sort of shopping activity on their phones, including comparing products and prices, searching for coupons, taking product pictures or locating a retail store. → Read More
Consumers continue to set records with online shopping sales this holiday season. After spending a whopping (and record) $1.25 billion on Cyber Monday, online shoppers continued spending online, with two other days in the past week eclipsing the $1 billion mark in e-commerce sales, bringing the total week’s value to $6 billion. comScore reports that Tuesday, November 29 reached $1.12 billion, while Wednesday, November 30 reached $1.03 billion. These three billion dollar spending days currently rank as three of the four heaviest online spending days in history (with Cyber Monday 2010 being the other). To date, $18.7 billion has been spent online this holiday season, a 15 percent increase from the same period last year.
So what is the reason why more consumers are spending online? comScore says that free shipping is one major factor many shoppers are considering when paying for presents this holiday season. This incentive, says the data research company, is being used at record levels over the first few weeks of the holiday season. → Read More
comScore just released its monthly U.S. mobile data report, which took a look at trends and activity during the three month average period ending October 2011. While Google Android continued to gain ground in the smartphone market (with 46.3 percent market share); Apple’s OEM share gained during this period (perhaps with the introduction of the iPhone 4S and Sprint as a carrier in the market), with one in ten mobile subscribers now using an iPhone.
According to comScore, 90 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in October, which is up 10 percent from the preceding three month period. And during the time period, 234 million Americans age 13 and older used mobile devices. → Read More
The U.S. comScore Video Metrix stats are out now for October, revealing that 184 million U.S. Internet users watched online videos last month, with an average of 21.1 hours per viewers. The total U.S. audience viewed 42.6 billion videos, an all-time high, says the measurement firm. Meanwhile, “Google sites,” led by YouTube, retained its number one ranking. However, in October, Facebook staged a comeback by moving up into the number two slot from its previous position of fifth place.
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It looks like will be a joyful holiday season for many online retailers this year. comScore is reporting that holiday retail e-commerce spending for the first 20 days of the November to December 2011 season is already up 14 percent from the same period last year. Wednesday, November 16 was the heaviest online spending day of the season to date at $688 million.
comScore is forecasting that total online retail spending for the holiday season will reach $37.6 billion, 15 percent increase from last year’s season. For background, the 2010 holiday shopping period saw a 12 percent increase from 2009. → Read More
All signs point to an increase in e-commerce spending this holiday shopping season compared to seasons past. comScore just released its online retail numbers for the third quarter of 2011, and online retail spending in the U.S. reached $36.3 billion for the quarter, up 13 percent versus year ago. This is the eighth consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth and fourth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth rates in e-commerce. In Q2 of this year, spending was up 14 percent from last year.
The top-performing online product categories were Digital Content & Subscriptions, Event Tickets, Jewelry & Watches, Consumer Electronics and Computer Software. Spending in each category grew at least 15 percent compared to a year ago. → Read More
ComScore just released its U.S. mobile subscriber numbers for the three-month average period ending September 2011. According to the report, 87.4 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in September, up 12 percent from the preceding three-month period.
Google’s Android OS was top smartphone platform with 44.8 percent market share, up 4.6 percentage points from the prior three-month period. Apple continued in the second position, growing 0.8 percentage points to account for 27.4 percent of the smartphone market. RIM ranked third with 18.9 percent share, down 4.6 percentage points from the preceding period, followed by Microsoft (5.6 percent) and Symbian (1.8 percent).
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comScore’s online video stats for September are in, and in today’s non-news, Google Sites again ranks as the number one source of online video views. Google Sites, which derives most of its traffic from YouTube, served 18.6 billion videos in September, which made up 47 percent of the 39.8 billion videos viewed on the Web last month.
What’s more, Microsoft Sites and Viacom Digital both leap-frogged Facebook in the rankings, to take third and fourth place respectively, as Facebook dropped to fifth. (You can read our August coverage here and Erick’s coverage of Facebook assuming third place back in July here.)
On the advertising side of online video, comScore reports that, of the 6.8 billion video ads viewed by Americans in September, more than 1 billion of those ad impressions were served by Hulu. → Read More
ComScore’s August web video rankings are in, and this is for sure: Americans watch an enormous amount of online video content, with most of that taking place on — you guessed it — YouTube. Of course, last month, Facebook, already the largest photo site on the Web, became the third largest video site on the Internet in terms of unique viewers. Which I find interesting since I can count the total number of times I’ve watched video on Facebook on two hands.
Yet, comScore’s rankings find Facebook retaining third position in August, with 51.6 million unique viewers, trailing VEVO in second (with 62 million) and Google Sites (i.e. YouTube) at 162 million. Viacom Digital lept into fourth place, while Microsoft dropped into fifth, as Yahoo and Aol remained in sixth and seventh, with their unique views on the rise. → Read More
Europe is growing quite fond of Google’s Android operating system, according to market research firm ComScore. Android devices now account for nearly a quarter of all the smartphones used in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK — a dramatic jump over the Google OS’s performance last year.
In July 2010, Android only accounted for 6% of the smartphones used in those five European markets, putting it dead last behind Symbian, Apple, Microsoft, and RIM. One year later, Android has zoomed past their rivals in Cupertino, and now is second only to Symbian in terms of market share. → Read More
comScore’s July traffic numbers are out and similar to June’s findings, Facebook and Twitter both saw record traffic in terms of U.S. unique visitors in the month. In July, Facebook saw a whopping 162 million unique visitors, compared to 160.8 million unique vistors in June, and 157.2 million uniques in May.
Twitter also posted record traffic in its five year history; with 32.8 million unique U.S. visitors in July, up from 30.6 million unique visitors in June, and 27 million unique vistors in May. As we’ve noted in the past, the steady increase in traffic is a big deal for Twitter, which splits traffic between its own mobile clients and the many third-party clients that are used to access the network. And Twitter just completed the switch from the old web interface to its redesigned, feature-rich web app. → Read More
According to audience measurement and tracking firm comScore, U.S. retail e-commerce spending went up 14 percent in the second quarter of this year, compared to the same period a year ago. Online retail spending reached $37.5 billion for the quarter, primarily due to an increase in the number of buyers (up 16 percent), with 70 percent of all Internet users making at least one online purchase in the quarter.
We should note that spending was lower than the first quarter of the year, when comScore tracked $38 billion in retail e-commerce sales. → Read More
