A few weeks ago, Nielsen//NetRatings decided to shift its focus from page views to the length of visits on Web sites. On Monday, comScore followed up with a change of its own by introducing qSearch 2.0. Google in particular will be happy with the change.
On a large scale perspective, qSearch 2.0 will expand its view to search markets beyond the five major search engines: Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Ask, and AOL. Sites like Wikipedia, Amazon, and eBay will also be included. Searches conducted on other sites like YouTube and MapQuest will also be tracked.
"Search is no longer the box we're all used to. A more fluid definition of the market necessitates looking at search more broadly," said comScore Chief Executive Magid Abraham.
Search engines will also benefit. Multi-tabbed searches have been counted as a single search before, but with qSearch 2.0 each tabbed search will count as a separate query. For example, a search for "Christmas tree" on the Web, in images, and in blogs will each count as a separate query, which in this case means that three queries have been run for "Christmas tree."
Google will benefit significantly from this change.
"Google really gets a boost from the addition of hosted and affiliate site searches to the core numbers. Between its search boxes on numerous websites and the acquisition of YouTube and its traffic, Google's share of search under the qScore 2.0 calculation gave it 54.9 percent market share for June 2007, and 55.2 percent for July," explained David A. Utter at WebProNews.
Abraham also mentioned that comScore would follow Nielsen//NetRatings lead and present a revamped method for tracking ad impressions, since page views are now an inadequate measurement.
Sources:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070820/ap_on_hi_te/comscore_
online_search;_ylt=ArWv0gqRLCtWII4TdDaukFL6VbIF
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/08/20/comscore-qscore-
tallies-well-for-google
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