Directories

The influence of mobile devices on local content continues to grow, details the Local Search Association in a new study [pdf] prepared using comScore data. According to the study, 48% of mobile phone users accessed local content in December 2012, up from 42% a year earlier. And that figure should only grow alongside rising smartphone penetration: smartphone users were more than 5 times as likely as non-smartphone users to access local content (77% vs. 14%). In fact, a significant 24% of traffic to online directories and other local resources came from mobiles and tablets in December 2012, quadruple the 6% share from a year earlier. Read more »

Google is the most-frequently used site for Q&A by a wide margin, according to data from Ask.com and the Q1 2011 GMI Brand Image Monitor. Almost three-quarters (73%) of online adults using a search engine at least weekly said they used Google to ask, look for or answer a question in the past month. Read more »

While Google remained the dominant US search engine in December 2010, it experienced declines in year-over-year market share, query volume and unique visitors, according to new data from Compete. Most significantly, Google's unique search visitor total dropped 16.6%, from 184 million in December 2009 to 154 million in December 2010. Read more »

Microsoft, which saw its total core search engine query volume drop 4% month-over-month in November 2010, rebounded strongly in December 2010 with a 9% gain, according to new comScore qSearch data. Microsoft's core search queries grew from about 2.01 billion to 2.18 billion, placing it third overall. Read more »

Microsoft sites, which have recently shown impressive month-over-month growth in core and explicit search queries, backslid a bit in November 2010, according to new comScore qSearch data. In particular, total core searches conducted on Microsoft sites (primarily representing the Bing search engine introduced earlier this year) dropped 10% between October and November 2010, from 2.3 billion to a little more than 2 billion. Read more »

Online gambling sites continued a surge of visits from US internet users in October 2010, according to [pdf] data from the comScore Media Metrix service. Read more »

Bing is continuing to make inroads on Google's dominance of the US search market, according to new data from Compete. Read more »

Below are some links to recent research news, studies and lists from the collection of items that MarketingCharts didn't get to writing up this week, but still may be worth a peek: Read more »

The number of impressions delivered by the US online display ad market grew 22% in Q3 2010, according to new comScore AdMetrix data. Read more »

Fifty-seven percent of major online retailers have begun their 2010 holiday season promotional email campaigns, according to Chad White, research director at Responsys and author of the Retail Email Blog. Read more »