Analysis and discussion of search engine market share.
MarketWise FAQ
What is MarketWise?
MarketWise is a tool for measuring search engine market share.
Other tools allow you to measure your search engine rankings on a keyword-by-keyword basis. While this is helpful, it’s only a beginning. What you really need to know isn’t your ranking on hundreds or even thousands of keywords but your share of the market as defined by its keywords. MarketWise goes beyond traditional ranking analysis to measure a site’s search engine market share and the market share of its competitors.
What’s a market?
A market is simply a collection of keywords used by searchers.
The hockey market, for example, would be defined by search terms like “hockey equipment”, “hockey skates”, “hockey sticks”, and so on. The more keywords in a market, the more accurate the MarketWise profile. MarketWise typically considers hundreds or even thousands of keywords in assembling a profile.
How do I define my market?
You define your market by including or excluding additional keywords.
Keywords are associated with sites. Each profile has a primary site whose keywords are included by default in the calculation of market share. If you include another site’s keywords, the additional keywords, if any, will be included in the calculation of market share.
In general you want to include sites that share the same focus as the site you’re profiling. If your primary site has limited market share, you’ll get a more accurate picture of true market share if you broaden the market to include the keywords of its major competitors. In some cases, however, including another site’s keywords may not be a good idea. Large sites like Wikipedia or Amazon.com have keyword lists too broad to be useful in practice.
Why won’t MarketWise profile my site?
If your site is new or doesn’t have many listings in the search engines, MarketWise can’t build a market profile from your site. But you still may be able to see your market share.
Instead of starting with your site in step one, try entering a leading competitor in your market. A site with more search engine listings allows MarketWise to better define your market. This way you can gain insight into your market regardless of your current market share.
How does MarketWise work?
MarketWise uses proprietary technology to provide predictive estimates of search engine market share. Unlike other tools, MarketWise doesn’t rely on sampling, which means it can provide market share estimates for sites regardless of traffic level.
MarketWise technology is patent-pending.
Why measure search engine market share in the first place?
For the same reasons offline businesses do – if you can measure it, chances are you can improve it.
Most sites acquire their traffic almost exclusively from search engines. It’s helpful for site owners to know how good a job they’re doing at traffic acquisition compared to their competitors. Answering this question, however, has proven surprisingly difficult. MarketWise has been developed to give site owners a handy overview of their market at a glance.
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Published Thursday, November 16, 2006 7:00 AM by David
Filed under: FAQ
Comments
MarketWise Blog said:
Search engine market share of picture frame retailers. Breaks market down into organic share, ppc share, and total.
November 20, 2006 5:32 PM
MarketWise Blog said:
Search engine market share of hockey equipment retailers. Breaks market down into organic share, ppc share, and total.
November 21, 2006 7:52 AM
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