Search Analytics Update: Now With More Openness
Written by Compete (contact - e-mail) -- February 28th, 2008 | Recommend ThisCompete.com released a really exciting improvement to Search Analytics this morning: Public access! While the tool has always been accessible to Compete.com members, now all Search Analytics reports are available to anyone with an internet connection by visiting searchanalytics.compete.com.
What does this mean?
Any Compete.com visitor is now able to experience the utility of Search Analytics. These reports will function exactly as they would for our members but display a more limited data set of the top 5 results instead of the full data sets of up to 100,000 terms.
Non-members can now try Search Analytics
If you’re a new visitor, make sure to check it out. If you’re a member with credits, run full reports smugly, knowing that your results are at least 10 times the volume.
This new level of accessibility is a response to the great advice we’ve gotten directly from our members. As we continue to grow, your feedback shapes our site, so please keep it coming.
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February 29th, 2008 at 10:44 am
This is awesome - it will now allow the general public to give feedback about the overall accuracy of your stats and help you improve
February 29th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Wow! Impressive we must say. Enabling more people understand search trends could definitely improve the industry as a whole. Way to go!
March 1st, 2008 at 4:13 am
This is a smart move. I tried a number of sites and keywords, but find some results surprising and suspicious.
For instance, look at keyword “simpy”:
http://searchanalytics.compete.com/keyword_destination/simpy
This gives 14,879 avg. monthly search referrals for simpy.com domain.
I run simpy.com and I’m looking at its referral stats right now and see that this number is about an order of magnitude off the actual number.
Here is another one. Technorati happens to be Quantified Publisher:
http://www.quantcast.com/technorati.com
From that we can see TR gets 13-14 monthly PVs.
But this is what Compete SA gives:
http://searchanalytics.compete.com/keyword_destination/technorati
Keyword “technorati” is 3.71% of its search referrals, that being 797,969 avg. monthly search referrals.
100 / 3.71 = about 26
Thus, the total number of search referrals is 798,000 * 26 = 20,748,000
So this is saying TR gets almost 21M PVs from search referrals alone. But in fact, since Quantcast measures TR traffic directly (i.e. no estimates, that *is* the real traffic), we can see that the PVs are at 13-14M, which means Compete SA numbers are about 50% off!
Can someone from Compete comment on this? Am I making some wrong assumptions anywhere?
I like the service, I like the numbers, but if they are indeed as off as these two examples show, then…
March 1st, 2008 at 4:19 am
Oh, and in my Technorati example in my comment above I forgot to emphasize:
Compete shows almost 21M monthly *search referrals.*
Quantcast shows 13-14M monthly *PVs*. (i.e. not *just* search referrals)
This makes Compete SA numbers even more off (not all PVs are search referrals - only the initial PV that lead the searcher to a site from a search engine is counted as a search referral, I presume).
Big note: this is not a Compete SA vs. Quantcast comparison. I am using Quantcast here only because in this case Quantcast gives the actual traffic numbers (i.e. not estimated), because Technorati happens to have the little Quantcast beacon.
March 1st, 2008 at 4:29 am
And here is question. I’ll use Technorati as an example, why not:
http://searchanalytics.compete.com/site_referrals/technorati.com
Note this in the Overview box:
Domain / Category technorati.com
Time frame 2007-11-29 to 2008-02-27
Available results 7,945 terms
Is this saying that, in the last month, 7,945 distinct terms (search queries, really, right?) were used by people who went to technorati.com after doing a search (on google, yahoo, ask, live…)?
If my interpretation is correct, then isn’t this number *way* *way* *way* too low? I looked at a few other domains and the numbers looked way too low, too. Am I not interpreting these numbers correctly?
Thanks.
March 3rd, 2008 at 2:16 pm
Otis - Currently there’s a disconnect between the “Average monthly search referrals” data and the site and keyword share data. While both of these data points are valuable, you can’t simply multiple the “Average monthly search referral” data by site share to get an approximation of search referrals for a keywords, which may help to explain some of your questions.
Specifically focusing on the Technorati example, I believe you were a bit confused about the “average monthly search referral” column data. This is actually total monthly referrals for the SITE not for a specific keyword. As a result , the 21M number you came up with is actually 798,000.
In reference to your last comment, we are not claiming that only 8000 terms were used by people to get to Technorati. What that data point means is that Compete actually sees 8000 unique terms. As a panel based measurement company, we are not going to see every search term driving traffic to a site, but instead get a great cross section of search behavior. Search is an extremely long-tail activity, and we don’t expect to see every term driving traffic to a site.
If you have more questions, feel free to email me (mfreiert@compete.com)
March 3rd, 2008 at 10:33 pm
Thank you for the follow-up, Max. I’m not sure why there is that disconnect between the “Average monthly search referrals” data and the site and keyword share data. That is, why aren’t per-keyword counts displayed? You must have the data in order to show “Keyword Share” percentage, no?
As for search terms numbers, I’m again looking at Technorati’s data:
http://searchanalytics.compete.com/site_referrals/technorati.com
Are “cialis” and “beastiality” and “phentermine” keywords really used more than search terms with words like “blog” or “search engine” in them? I suppose, doing searches with those queries on Google, I see Technorati is #2 for the search term “cialis”. Amazing.
Again, thank you for the clarification!