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comScore today released its first report on the U.K. search market from its enhanced comScore qSearch 2.0 online search measurement tool. The service, which was first launched in the U.K. in September 2007, has been updated to include several local market properties where search activity occurs, such as Rightmove Sites and Bebo.com.

I discussed how this expanded definition of “search” changes the landscape in the U.S. back in March in an article entitled, “Introduction to Search Engine Marketing at SES New York 2008.”

In the U.K., Google Sites continued its reign as the leading search property in April with 74.2 percent of all searches. eBay ranked second with 6 percent, followed by Yahoo! Sites (4.3 percent) and Microsoft Sites (3.4 percent).

Two U.K. properties, Rightmove Sites (0.8 percent share) and Bebo.com (0.7 percent share), ranked amongst the top 10. Popular social networking property, Facebook.com, claimed a 1.8-percent market share in April.

Yes, people conduct searches at social networking sites. It’s not your father’s SEO.

While Google has dominated the search market, it’s Yahoo that’s been the leader as a destination site (think email, photos, etc.), according to published reports. But the tide is turning in that field, as comScore reported Google sites finally overtook Yahoo sites in the month of April.

But unlike its lead in search, this lead is a slight one. Only 466,000 visitors separate the #1 and #2 slots in this field. Here’s the raw data for April:

Google sites saw 141.1 million visitors, up 18% year over year.
Yahoo sites saw 140.6 million visitors, up 7% year over year.
Microsoft trailed in third at 121 million.

Yahoo does still lead in page views, meaning either people are returning or are more engaged in Yahoo content. Yahoo had 33.6 billion page views while Google saw 28.7 billion page views.

Search engine marketers love their data, so grab a cup of coffee and mull over the numbers released by Hitwise and Compete.com for the search market in March 2008. Of course, both have Google as possessing the mammoth share of the market, with Hitwise attributing 67.25% and Compete showing 69.4%.

Hitwise has Google gaining 0.84% over February 2008 and 3.12% over March of 2007. Compete.com has Google losing 0.6% month over month and gaining 4.7% year over year.

Both reports saw losses for Yahoo. Hitwise reports 20.29% for March 2008, 20.59% for February 2008, and 21.26% for March 2007. Compete has Yahoo at 14.8% for March 2008, 15.7% for February 2008, and 19.7% for March 2007.

But the two reports differ dramatically when it comes to MSN. Hitwise has MSN at 6.65% in March 2008 down from 6.95% in February 2008 and 9.01% in March 2007. Hitwise has MSN at 10.2% up from 8.4% in February 2008 and 9.5% in March 2007.

Compete also released data about the number of search queries. And this is where everyone but Yahoo shines. In year over year stats, Google saw an increase of 51.9%, MSN 51.8%, Ask 57%, and AOL 43.5% in search query volume. Yahoo only saw a 6.1% increase over last year.

Related reading:
Google Reaches 60% Search Market Share
Microsoft Exec Claims They Will Have 30% Search Market Share
Consumer Satisfaction Doesn’t Equal Market Share

Want a snapshot of the day’s search marketing news? Here we’ve collected today’s top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:

From the SEW Blog:

• How to Go Beyond Linkbait : SES NYC
  Reciprocal links - good or bad? If done properly, they can still be a good SEO tactic.
• Microsoft in Hot Pursuit of Google
  At the Mix08 Conference in Las Vegas, Microsoft loudly declared its intentions to increase its share of the search market.
• Yahoo Maps Announces Updates
  Yahoo Maps announced Wednesday that an update was rolled out, which includes several data and style improvements.
• Pentagon Bans Google Mapping Vehicles from Military Bases
  The Pentagon has banned Google from driving their mapping vehicles on military bases after detailed street views of Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, appeared on Google Maps.
• Why Digg’s Worth $200 Million or More to Google
  Digg IPO? No. Digg FSBO. For Sale By Owner. Again. The auction for social search engine Digg begins when Microsoft and Google make their bid.
• SEW Experts: Has Google Already Won?
  With the imminent demise of Yahoo and Ask.com, Google seems to have cemented its near-total control of search. The monopolization of our industry is fast becoming a reality, and yet the users of search are oblivious.
• SEW Experts: Sales and Your Search Marketing Agency - Part 1
  Now that you know how to win the right search marketing clients, it’s time to look at one of the most important areas of your business — how to make sales.
• SEW Experts: Social Media Meets Local Search
  Despite the growing traffic to social networks, local search tools for users of those sites are surprisingly few and far between. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t stay active in those communities.
• AdWords Announces, Explains Load Time Usage In Quality Score
  The AdWords blog just announced the details of the inclusion of page load times in calculating Quality Score.

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At the Mix08 Conference in Las Vegas, Microsoft loudly declared its intentions to increase its share of the search market. Yesterday, Steve Ballmer told a room of 1,500 software developers that the software giant has its eyes set on catching Google.

During a Q&A with Guy Kawasaki, he called search the “killer application” of online advertising which he said will be the next “super big thing” and is the reason for the company’s Yahoo offer.

Ballmer lamented the fact that Microsoft did not get an earlier start in the search game, but maintained that they were still the “little engine that could.” He even rallied the troops by reenacting his famous “Monkey Boy” routine from 2001, but this time gave it a twist by chanting “Web Developers! Web Developers! Web Developers!”

Earlier in the week, during his keynote address, Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie spoke about how search was driving community-based innovation in the software industry and how the change was affecting online advertising.

“With online advertising projected to grow from $40 billion today to $80 billion over the next three years, advertising is going to continue to be the primary way that we and you monetize services and apps of all kinds of the Web,” Ozzie said. “And so in terms of strategically what is Microsoft’s role in advertising on the Web, the answer is, in short, to do our part and to use the resources that we have to ensure that there’s a vibrant advertising ecosystem on the Web based on a highly competitive ad platform that’s attractive to advertisers, publishers, and developers alike.”

Ozzie also said these changes are affecting the way companies store information. “Most major enterprises are, today, in the early stages of what will be a very, very significant transition from the use of dedicated application servers to the use of virtualization and commodity hardware for consolidating apps on computing grids and storage grids within their data center. This trend will accelerate as apps are progressively refactored, horizontally refactored to make use of this new virtualization-powered utility computing model. A model that will span from the enterprise data center, and ultimately, into the cloud.”

Sir Riichard Branson launched a new vertical search engine, Virgin Charter, that promises to revolutionize high-end corporate travel and last minute luxury travel.

Scott Duffy, Virgin Charter CEO, said his search engine combines three of the best ideas on the Internet: local search user and seller reviews (eBay); Priceline’s auction; and the “simplicity of Expedia.”

They’re partnering exclusively, though, with Travelocity Business as online business travel agency. Virgin Charter’s targeting the $30 billion market for private air travel with an online auction marketplace.

To put the private charter “size of market” in perspective, $30 billion is roughly the total size of the search market. That’s one reason why vertical search promises exponential growth in coming years.

Last year JPMorgan Chase predicted search would reach more than $30 billion this year. Search totaled just over $26 billion in 2007. The JP Morgan Chase forecast estimated search could reach $60 billion by 2011.

On the Virgin Charter “Travel 2.0″ site, you can submit a trip request (standard vertical search engine data: preferred trip dates, locations, special requests) to charter air operators. The Virgin Charter system sends your request to a network of safety-certified charter carriers.

As with LendingTree and financial services vertical search engines, you compare custom quotes and offers. Charter operators openly compete to win your business, offering detailed quotes based on your request.

Searchers can select based on price, operator, plane type, flyer reviews, and (J.D. Power) quality ratings. On some flights, smoking may be permitted. Some operators may allow pets to travel. No word on whether snakes are allowed on any planes.

Virgin Charter also offers “Hot Deals” - empty legs - inventory that the charter industry traditionally allows to perish. That’s great news for the hotel industry. Virgin Charter may create a new class of passenger: the last minute luxury traveler.

An empty leg is the outbound or return flight of a trip that’s been partially booked.
Virgin Charter lets searchers bid on an empty leg flight. The charter operator would decide whether to accept the offer or counter. It’s like Priceline with humans, a bazaar concept in which buyer and seller might haggle.

Virgin markets empty legs as “the greener way to go” since the plane must fly. Unless of course, it doesn’t. Virgin cautions people that an empty leg flight may change or be cancelled since it’s based on a trip for another passenger. If that customer changes his originating flight, you’re out of luck. Empty legs should be used for last minute travel when your schedule’s flexible.

The early adopters? More likely to be the low-end FHM Top 10 or Sci-Fi starlets like Victoria Pratt, Melissa George, Natasha Henstridge or Claudia Black.

Personal assistants to Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and even the Real Housewives of New York City wouldn’t dare risk empty leg syndrome.

Pics after the jump.

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Tim O’Reilly views Microsoft-Yahoo as a Web 2.0 play with the combined company dominating free (Web 1.0) online e-mail services. In a great post generating lots of buzz, he cites Hitwise data showing Yahoo Mail / Yahoo! Address Book at 58 percent of market share (#1) and Windows Live Mail (#2) at 25.5 percent share (not including AOL).

Tim argues the combined personal and private data from e-mail applications would clear the way for developers to create more powerful Web 2.0 apps and an Open ID system. True. Data assets built on networks can be monetized.

Web 2.0, though, has largely been sustained by next-gen “made-for-adsense” online ad-supported business models, developer sweat equity, and the promise of a Google/Yahoo/Microsoft acquisition exit strategy.

O’Reilly thinks Microsoft would be making a “fatal mistake” to take the battle to Google on its own ground. “That’s the very mistake that companies like Netscape made in competing with Microsoft,” he notes. I disagree that lessons from the early browser search engine wargames apply in the age of cloud computing.

The primary problem with a pre-Bubble 1.0 Netscape world view: in online advertising, Yahoo properties successfully compete with Google. Hitwise and comScore data show a combined Microhoo entity far more popular than Google’s network of sites.

Google’s still trying to find ways to compete with the Yahoo/MSN vertical search engines (Finance, News, Sports, Travel, Auto). Fortune 500 brands love them for search-informed display / video ad campaigns. Only YouTube “branded channels” are starting to make significant inroads for Google in strategic digital marketing campaigns.

In O’Reilly Radar blog comments, the often profane but always brilliant Dave McClure of 500 Hats fame notes Google could then jump in to take AOL off the hands of the company formerly known as AOL Time Warner.

McClure also notes the other problem with the e-mail-centric view of the deal: social search engines like Facebook and LinkedIn already have built-in (crude) e-mail systems. Their online e-mail share isn’t counted in the Hitwise data, as O’Reilly notes.

What O’Reilly and McClure omit: Facebook and LinkedIn already have better user data with extensive demographic profiles of their members who’ve given full opt-in permission and share their IDs openly. That’s the fatal flaw in the e-mail as strategic asset argument.

The Microsoft-Yahoo deal is driven by search, not e-mail assets or their Web 2.0 potential. Ceding the search market to Google creates a GoogleNet that would supplant the Internet as an open marketplace.

If e-mail had such huge strategic value, Microsoft would have bid on Facebook at perhaps one-third the price: the much-scoffed at and oft-times scorned $15 billion valuation based on Microsoft’s current stake in Facebook.

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It’s pretty obvious that this is all about the ad dollars. But they only get those dollars because we all go online to find news and information.

Eyetrack studies have shown us that many more people look at and click on organic search results than ads or sponsored links. So what would this merger mean in term of a search experience, organic results and news content?

comScore Media Metrix latest figures show Google now controls nearly 60% of the U.S. search market, and has been widening its lead, despite concerted efforts by both second-place Yahoo and third-place Microsoft. By combining, Microsoft and Yahoo would have close to 30% of the U.S. search market.

Speaking at the announcement early this morning Ray Ozzie, Chief Software Architect at MS, said “Social platform will become a new entry point,” and called Yahoo pioneers in this field. “We can further accelerate the transformation to a more social web.”

Sounds promising. Perhaps Yahoo’s innovative thinking and social media smarts combined with Microsoft’s deep pockets might give us a better search experience in the long run.
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In terms of news search Yahoo is top of the list with over 30 million readers and Google is only at at #7 with just under 10 million. (Could this have been one factor in Google’s decision to feature news on their web SERP’s?)

How this merger will affect our organic search experience and the online news audience remains to be seen. Since they want the ad dollars they will have to draw the users and to do that they need to up their game and improve the organic search function.

China’s most popular search engine Baidu has finally launched its long anticipated Japanese portal. Baidu Chairman and CEO, Robin Li expressed excitement upon entering the Japanese search market.
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Consider this one more example of how Yahoo does not, by any means, move quickly. Still, the search market’s perpetual runner-up does move, and its latest change brought the FareChase travel engine into a more prominent spot.
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