Hitwise performed an interesting demographic analysis last week, comparing the breakdown of Google and Yahoo search users. What it found was that Google users skew older than Yahoo search users, bucking some of the conventional wisdom in the market about the relative composition of their audiences. Google users are also more likely to be affluent and have spent more online.
Read the full article: http://searchengineland.com/080218-093339.php
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
I wonder if there are some issues of class and access at work here.
For example, a friend of mine in a rural area used Yahoo for just about everything - email, searching, etc. That was largely because the only access that she could afford to get was dail-up through Southwestern Bell - who had partnered with Yahoo. The software that helped her get connected to the Internet for the first time also set her up to prefer that service.
On the other hand, I had access early on, through my university. With no specifically branded first time entry to the Internet, I've moved from Yahoo to AltaVista (remember them?) to Google.
I think that a lot of younger, high school age people seem to use Yahoo for their email, and therefore the Yahoo search. It seems like Google doesn't really advertise itself, but Yahoo seems to get their name out a little more.
This is quite surprising. I thought Google was hip and cool and all the youngsters were using it and that Yahoo was boring and older people used it for YahooFinance stuff. hmmm. Just like Fazia, I went through Yahoo, then Altavista then came to Google. I just figured in this day and age, with the popularity of Google, (heck its a word and every new Judd Apatow movie uses 'google' as a verb these days) that all the young trendy kids wouldn't know the name of a single search engine except Google.
That's funny because I have a MyYahoo page and it's my default when I open my Mac. Even with Yahoo open I'll go to Google to Google something. I do fall into the "older" user group, but not so much the "affluent" user group.
I can understand why Yahoo would be more appealing to the younger generation. Yahoo is colorful, the homepage has a ton of things to do, like games and music. Google on the other is less crowded, everything is "in its place". I think Google is more attractive to the older crowds because it has a more professional look.
I read that as people use the internet more they will be more likely to use Google as their search engine. This has been true for me I am embarrassed to say I used AOL's search engine for many years and eventually turned to Google after I realized it was giving me much better search results. I think Google comes off as more reputable to most people than Yahoo, and I believe it is in that it not only considers the links when determining page rank but it also analyzes the page that it came from.
Post a Comment