Fri, Feb 2, 2007
A recent post by Yahoo’s Matt Martone cites a Yahoo blog touting data from Google Trends that Yahoo! is “the number one search term on their search engine last year.”
Wrong.
Google Trends tracks the number of times a certain word or phrase ends up in Google’s index. It does not reflect the most searched terms.
For that info, go to Google’s Zeitgiest, of which, “Yahoo” failed to make 2006’s Top Ten. Sorry Matt.
Popularity: 8% [?]
Joel Cheesman - who has written 1471 posts on Cheezhead Recruiting News and Opinion.
One of the most widely-read bloggers on emerging recruitment issues in the world. Accomplishments include being named Recruiting.com’s Best Technology Recruitment Blog and Best Recruiting Blog. Joel's been featured in Fast Company magazine, BusinessWeek Magazine, Resumes for Dummies, U.S. News & World Report, The Wall Street Journal and more. Plug into Joel via Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, iTunes, YouTube or Flickr.
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February 2nd, 2007 at 5:56 pm
Actually, you’re the one who’s wrong here. The Zeitgeist doesn’t contain true data, it excludes obvious, adult-oriented terms and terms like Yahoo – which would otherwise dominate the list consistently.
See Google’s own admission of this,
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/12/how-we-came-up-with-year-end-zeitgeist.html
which was only published after SearchEngineLand.com pushed them to admit it:
http://searchengineland.com/061229-075249.php
An independent source give MySpace the lead over Yahoo:
http://weblogs.hitwise.com/leeann-prescott/2007/01/2006_top_search_terms_a_closer.html
February 2nd, 2007 at 6:14 pm
That’s not the point. The noted blog states that Google Trends is a measure of most searched terms on Google. It is not. You can debate Google’s filter all day, but I don’t see how you can argue Trends being a gauge for top searched terms.
February 2nd, 2007 at 6:19 pm
I completely agree there, but it’s better than the Zeitgeist
February 5th, 2007 at 10:37 am
Sorry Joel. Looks like we were both wrong.
As you pointed out, I was wrong when I cited Google Trends as a measure for the overall number of searches on Google.
As Tim pointed out, you were wrong when you cited Google Zeitgiest as a better measure.
In the end, I was wrong on this and so were you yet I think we can both agree that when it comes to the online recruitment space which you and I support, few if any are better positioned that Yahoo….
We are leveraging a Yahoo’s huge and qualified audience with matching technologies to help companies attract talent whether their recruiting needs are local/international, active/passive or industry/occupation specific.
– 124 million unique visitors (comScore)
– 79% of our audience is employed full-time (comScore)
– Search marketing for recruitment on Yahoo! Search and partner networks
– Behavioral targeted display recruitment advertising and on sites like Yahoo! Finance, Music, Personals, Education etc.
– Job posting/resume searching on Yahoo! HotJobs
Btw, according to the Hitwise report which Tim references, excluding adult-orientated content, ‘Yahoo’ was the #4 search term across all engines. ‘Yahoo.com’ was #7.
That’s 2 terms in the Top 10. I can live with that.