Following the Ratings - Ask Jeeves Moving Up

[MUSCLE13]

Isn't it time Jeeves got some respect in the internet world? Heck they are beating Amazon and Interactive Corp every week in the Nielsen home ratings. And by a wide margin -


United States: Top 10 Parent Companies
Week ending June 14, 2004
Home Panel

Parent Name Unique
Audience
(000) Reach
% Time
Per
Person
Microsoft 55,275 51.42 00:32:30
Time Warner 49,424 45.98 01:24:44
Yahoo! 47,479 44.17 00:46:06
Google 24,964 23.22 00:08:29
eBay 16,100 14.98 00:39:21
Ask Jeeves 11,706 10.89 00:11:12
United States Government 9,608 8.94 00:11:06
InterActiveCorp 8,957 8.33 00:12:05
Amazon 8,163 7.59 00:10:21
RealNetworks 8,093 7.53 00:22:14

http://www.nielsennetratings.com/reports.jsp?section=pub_reports&report=parent&period=weekly&panel_type=2

[seobook]

Isn't it time Jeeves got some respect in the internet world? Heck they are beating Amazon and Interactive Corp every week in the Nielsen home ratings. And by a wide margin

yes, but they are still being beat by an auction. granted that auction is ebay, but it is an auction site nonetheless.

[MUSCLE13]

yes, but they are still being beat by an auction. granted that auction is ebay, but it is an auction site nonetheless.

Many people consider eBay the best internet business that ever existed. It will be interesting to see if search does effect the auction business, and become the premier net business.

[Webvisitor]

I like Ask Jeeves and believe the business model is setting up the co. to be a player in the future of search. Think about it-- they only own about 7-8 percent of the search market right now. Teomas tech is argueably as good as Google's though not updated as often as it should be. I believe this will change soon.
MSFT wants natural language search in its own future---Jeeves is already there.
Demographics are key in search and all indications imply the rich female likes the Butler. Kids use the Butler.
The biggest problem ASK has right now is the perception among SEOs and search media commentators that the conversion rates are low. As the JeevesGuy on WMW pointed out last week this should change as they get rid of the frames. Their logs will reveal data that was not available before.
I truly believe as you do that the Butler is poised to shock the search world with increased popularity and inovations.
And yes they should buy Lycos in addition to a PPC platform. :)

[MUSCLE13]

5 straight weeks at #6. We have a trend here

Nielsen Netratings

United States: Top 10 Parent Companies
Week ending June 21, 2004
Home Panel

Parent Name Unique
Audience
(000) Reach
% Time
Per
Person
Microsoft 55,702 52.24 00:33:22
Time Warner 48,998 45.95 01:31:30
Yahoo! 47,432 44.48 00:46:26
Google 24,634 23.10 00:08:26
eBay 16,499 15.47 00:39:51
Ask Jeeves 11,606 10.88 00:10:04
United States Government 9,923 9.31 00:10:39
InterActiveCorp 8,384 7.86 00:11:42
RealNetworks 8,273 7.76 00:23:43
United Online 7,949 7.45 00:35:01

[MUSCLE13]

Look who is the Number 1 Gainer on the internet in June. Jeeves opening some eyes huh?

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040716/cgf014_1.html

[Elisabeth]

I've long been saying that Ask Jeeves/Teoma is the sleeper search engine to watch - search relevancy is impressive, and the quality of referrals, particularly in 'shopping' geared categories, is terrific.

[MUSCLE13]

Maybe a little respect coming their way now Elisabeth. It boggles my mind how Jeeves has practically been ignored by the industry. They remind me of Google 4 years ago -

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/07/19/BUGOJ7ME751.DTL

[dannysullivan]

Maybe a little respect coming their way now Elisabeth. It boggles my mind how Jeeves has practically been ignored by the industry. They remind me of Google 4 years ago -
They've hardly been ignored. Back in 1997/8, the were the up-and-comer that Google was. They were lavished with press attention and praised as the next best most wonderful thing.

Unfortunately, they stumbled -- as they've readily admitted (http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/article.php/2164181). They went on a long detour in purchasing Direct Hit (http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/article.php/2162261), then not developing that technology properly.

If they have been ignored during those lean years, it's simply because they hadn't continued to earn the attention. Many other services were also ignored. Google wasn't, because Google continued to deliver.

Fortunately, Ask Jeeves has greatly improved over the past two years. The Teoma technology they purchased in 2001 has continued to get better, plus they're doing really smart things such as invisible tab (http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3115131) work and Smart Search (http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3370751) integration. As they continue to prove themselves, you'll see the press return with respect and attention.

5 straight weeks at #6. We have a trend here
No, having watched these type of numbers over the years, looking at changes within a month can be misleading. You really aren't seeing a trend until the change stretches over three or four months.

Look who is the Number 1 Gainer on the internet in June. Jeeves opening some eyes huh?
The figures are a bit misleading. That 150% jump is due to the fact that traffic from the Excite Network is now added to Ask Jeeves, because of the recent purchase (http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3337511) by Ask Jeeves. Look at May 2004, and you'll see (http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=460) Excite ranked 9th and Ask ranked 22. Combined, they move much higher. Yep, both properties may have also seen some growth. But that giant jump isn't because suddenly the searching audience woke up and went in droves to Ask Jeeves. Instead, the June-to-July figure will give you better guidance.

[andrewgoodman]

It's quite interesting to see how differently the two rookie stars of 1998-99 fared. Obviously worlds apart.

But given how many companies flamed out, it's also a credit to Ask Jeeves that they stuck around. I still ask myself why. Quality results are NOT THE ANSWER, or at the very least they're a small part of it. It's still about mindshare and stuff.

I'm also concerned about Nielsen Netratings' rather loose methodology here. I am quite taken with the comScore qSearch stats with their "share of searches" data month to month, which seems much more search-centric. Here, Jeeves may be in the high single digits due to acquisitions, but that could be the high water mark as the various secondary brands they own erode... unless...

they shake things up with some better/cooler natural language search tech, or some gimmicks/wizards that will really help people answer tough questions, as was the original promise!

Is it just me or does Jeeves seem like it's a profitable, smartly-run BUSINESS, but is in a holding pattern from the standpoint of search?

I would also like to know -- who *are* these people who still use Excite, iWon, MyWay, etc.? :)

[Bernard]

... As the JeevesGuy on WMW pointed out last week this should change as they get rid of the frames. ...

Ask Jeeves is finally going to stop framing click throughs on search results? Now that is an improvement!

While Ask has the better branding AFAIK, I prefer Teoma's cleaner layout. Now if they would only start crawling more aggressively...

[MUSCLE13]

Danny - I don't think you guys ignored Jeeves at all. I don't think you guys ignored Google either the last 5 years. The portal industry did. In fact the internet industry practically gave up on search in my opinion. It was considered a loss leader by the portals. Google was ignored and thats exactly why they won. Google knew how important search was when the rest of the internet industry big boys ignored it, until Yahoo finally woke up and started buying everything search. Now the whole industry laughs at Jeeves. iWon ha, MyWay funny, who uses Excite?, downloadable MySearch toolbars with Weatherbug??? What a joke!!!! Tomorrow will be the release of the weekly Netratings again and if Jeeves hits #6 again thats would be 8 straight weeks or 2 months. This is not the late 90s Jeeves. This is a whole new company. If Jeeves goes after Lycos they will have effectively consolidated the whole second tier of portals and will probably have more monthly unique users than Google itself. You think the industry will laugh then?

[MUSCLE13]

No, having watched these type of numbers over the years, looking at changes within a month can be misleading. You really aren't seeing a trend until the change stretches over three or four months.




Danny, before Jeeves bought ISH (Excite Network), ISH was in the top 10 in the weekly home users ratings for the previous 10 months and was in the top 10 daily users ratings for the previous 5 years going back to iWon's first year. You don't think thats a trend? No disrespect Danny but I am not in the industry and I recognize a force that your industry has ignored.

[andrewgoodman]

Do you think I was laughing at Excite? I've followed the company for years and now, though, it's just a semi-revived brand under the confusing stewardship of Infospace, "ISH," and now Ask. (I don't keep up that well, sorry, since Excite isn't really a search engine. Last time I checked it was a flavor of Metacrawler. Infospace at one time ran four brands of metasearch. These are not insignificant properties but then again, their market share, as "share of searches," likely doesn't exceed 1-2% *combined*. Ask Jeeves/Teoma, not including their acquisitions, if you measure it on share of monthly searches, is somewhere around 5%. Let's not get carried away here.)

I'm not laughing at Excite, I'm trying to understand the usage pattern. The Netratings reports seem to lack credibility in comparison with comScore qSearch.

There is nothing all that stupendous about buying up a forgotten metasearch engine that has the brand name of a dead portal that used to actually run a real search engine. This makes Jeeves into a holding company, like Go2Net used to be before it merged with, uh, Infospace. It's still worth asking who is using Jeeves (or Excite) and why they would do so. I honestly don't know.

There is a little consolidation going on here, but probably more accurately there are a few well-run holding companies out there running multiple properties that each seem to be turning a profit for the time being.

Go2Net gave us Metacrawler and a host of interesting, little-known e-commerce companies and content plays. After they merged with Infospace, the team kept pursuing search, and it appears as if now some, but not all, of that has been sold to Ask Jeeves.

I will grant you that something interesting could happen if Jeeves tries to go after the portal market by reviving the Excite brand as a PORTAL, and buying Lycos to juice up the numbers a bit. But as Lycos, AltaVista, etc. already found out, #4 and #5 portals always lose (taking investors' money with them).

Probably the dismissiveness amongst observers comes from the fact that observers are passionate about search, and in properties like iWon and Excite, there is precious little of interest to a search expert. But I grant you, it is not just a search story but also a business story worth watching.

[andrewgoodman]

As for usage stats for ISH, this is exactly the type of thing we need to dig deeper into. iWon always had great stats, and for a time would crow about their ascendancy into the top ten Internet properties.

That doesn't carry a lot of weight unless a more thorough analysis is done. If someone is logging in every day to check if they won something, well... big deal.

Lots of things are *popular*. Online gaming, contests, you name it. But if we get things too muddled together we're giving companies credit for leading the way in the "search" biz when they have little to do with search at all.

[Mel]

I'm also concerned about Nielsen Netratings' rather loose methodology here. I am quite taken with the comScore qSearch stats with their "share of searches" data month to month, which seems much more search-centric. Here, Jeeves may be in the high single digits due to acquisitions, but that could be the high water mark as the various secondary brands they own erode... unless...

I agree Andrew, the Netratings score is based on how many unique indivduals visited any one of the parents web sites with the ranking period (usually one month) and thus reflects visits for email, messenger, etc, and to my mind does not reveal a companies true position with regard to search, since in these rankings one individual visiting once in a month to check email has the same ranking power as a searcher who conduts a thousand searches a month.
The Comscore results are more relevant IMO.

[MUSCLE13]

Sorry Andrew I have read your site for years and I like it but I think you got just about everything wrong on the ISH deal. First Jeeves released the official search figures for ISH when they bought the company. ISH had 700 million searches in 4th quarter 2003 ( none of this from Excite because Infospace owns the Excite search box). Jeeves had about 680 million searches in that time period so ISH actually had more searches by a hair. The percentages according to the Jeeves announcement of the deal were about 3.5 % of searches for each company equalling approximately 7% of total searches. Berkowitz even said on the concall that the industry does not do a good job on measuring searches so Jeeves releases actual search numbers per quarter. Since Excite search is owned by Infospace, Excite is not the major part of this deal and the resources that Jeeves has will be thrown into developing ISH's bigger properties - My Way, My Search, iWon all of which get more traffic than Excite. All of this was talked about on the Jeeve's concall after the deal. A great question was asked by one of the analysts on the call about whether Jeeves was going to syndicate search through Maxonline - the ad network ISH owns that covers about 40% of the internet user base with 1500 affiliated content sites. I thought that was a fantastic idea and Berkowitz seemed to agree with the concept from his response. Downloadable apps also seems to be the future of search which the industry almost completely ignores. I mean who pays attention to smiley central with its my search toolbars? Nobody realizes how well ISH does at distribution and marketing. ISH had more searches than Jeeves according to Jeeves own numbers, and none of it included Excite!

[Webvisitor]

The looming battle ASK is setting up between OVER and Google for the paid content contract. In a recent interview Berkowitz hinted that while they are not yet ready to go it alone with MaxOnline it is an option for the future.

Another forgotten or at least not often mentioned fact is Jeeves desireable demographics. As I recall the key demographic Jeeves enjoys is the 40 year old female, upper middle class with a willingness to shop online. It must be the suave' butler. Ha

For what it's worth. My computer literate kids (under 14) have never "Googled" anything. For years now they say "Let's ask Jeeves". The Jeeves brand caught on in my home.

[MUSCLE13]

8 straight weeks at #6 in home users

United States: Top 10 Parent Companies
Week ending July 12, 2004
Home Panel

Parent Name Unique
Audience
(000) Reach
% Time
Per
Person
Microsoft 53,393 51.89 00:33:27
Time Warner 47,537 46.20 01:27:25
Yahoo! 45,845 44.55 00:45:53
Google 24,121 23.44 00:08:20
eBay 16,098 15.64 00:44:37
Ask Jeeves 10,347 10.05 00:11:33
United States Government 10,029 9.75 00:11:17
RealNetworks 8,727 8.48 00:24:54
InterActiveCorp 8,510 8.27 00:12:00
Amazon 7,909 7.69 00:08:38

http://www.nielsennetratings.com/reports.jsp?section=pub_reports&report=parent&period=weekly&panel_type=2

Incidentally Jeeves has also entered the top 10 in at work users. Maybe one day they will get some respect. I think they need Lycos.

[Webmaster T]

I'm not laughing at Excite, I'm trying to understand the usage pattern. The Netratings reports seem to lack credibility in comparison with comScore qSearch.I Agree Andrew, one of the things I don't like about using these numbers is it isn't search centric. Netrating I believe monitors users like they do for TV. Should an SEM care if someone is going to Yahoo to get email? No that isn't a search query it is skew. Same goes for any site that is potentially a default for the browser opening or any activity other than search.

That's why the info in the comScore qSearch is some of the best to use for SEM. I like to take the numbers and look at the logs, compare and identify weaknesses based on the marketshare they have and share of my referrals. If they are significantly lower or higher I may be finished or I may have lots more to do.

[MUSCLE13]

No, having watched these type of numbers over the years, looking at changes within a month can be misleading. You really aren't seeing a trend until the change stretches over three or four months.




10 straight weeks at #6. Trend yet Danny?

Nielsen Netratings

United States: Top 10 Parent Companies
Week ending July 26, 2004
Home Panel

Parent Name Unique
Audience
(000) Reach
% Time
Per
Person
Microsoft 55,325 52.50 00:32:52
Time Warner 48,453 45.98 01:28:02
Yahoo! 47,085 44.68 00:47:14
Google 24,803 23.54 00:08:17
eBay 17,442 16.55 00:42:48
Ask Jeeves 11,247 10.67 00:11:36
United States Government 9,670 9.18 00:09:30
Walt Disney Internet Group 9,205 8.74 00:22:33
RealNetworks 9,059 8.60 00:22:11
Amazon 8,290 7.87 00:10:07

[Mel]

There is a trend using the figures that Neilson uses, but IMO those figures have very little to do with establishing the leader in search. Comscore publish search market share, which does not include visitors who are checking thier email, chatting on Messenger, participating if forums and many other non search related activities.

The Neilson Figures IMO can be likened to calculating the number of customers for a cigar store located in a train station by counting the number of persons passing through the station each month.

[MUSCLE13]

Comscore publish search market share, which does not include visitors who are checking thier email, chatting on Messenger, participating if forums and many other non search related activities.



Mel just to point out how truely inaccurate the Comscore QSearch figures are -

Jeeves released these figures when they acquired ISH - quarterly numbers for Jeeves 680 million searches quarterly numbers for ISH 700 million searches. (each with about 3.5% market share totalling 7% together). These are figures reported to the SEC in filings. The last Qsearch figures that Danny posted on the site the other day had Jeeves with 1.8% of the search market with ISH at 4.3%. So QSearch has ISH more than doubling Jeeves share totally contradicting Jeeves reported numbers at the time of the acquisition. It almost makes the Qsearch figures laughable.

[Mel]

Are you saying that the figures for May 2004 should match the figures that Jeeves reported for some previous period, or that the Neilsen Net ratings figures which are not search share but market reach and which include anyone who visits any one of the sites for any reason are more accurate?

Can you recommend a better source of Data?

[MUSCLE13]

Unfortunately the only good source of search queries right now is if a company reports its data in its quarterly results. Jeeves reports its exact number of queries each quarter. I mean look at the Nielsen June search data that Danny posted on the site. It had Jeeves and Excite at 7% and MyWay at 4.4%. Is that combined total anyway near the Comscore QSearch data? No. Not even close. At least the unique visitors from Comscore and Nielsen usually are pretty much in agreement. The search figures are all over the map. Industry should get it straight. I wish.

[MUSCLE13]

And why are Comscore QSearch and Nielsen search figures including Excite.com searches with Jeeves and ISH? Infospace owns the Excite search box, not Jeeves. Get it straight already guys!

[MUSCLE13]

July Comscore ratings are out. Jeeves in with 42 million users compared to 39 million in June. Position in the top 10 remains at #6. Gotta love the trend!

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040816/cgm037_1.html

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

My job is marketing. I know close to nothing about stock valuation and such, but I do know that referrers from AskJeeves is not overloading my webservers - to say the least :)

As a marketer, I am not so concerned with haw many users one engine has or not, or whatever fancy numbers they can pull at me. I want to see visitors; visitors that converts into buyers or qualified leads. Thats what the companies that hire me expect from the work I do and that's how I evaluate where to spend time and money.

[MUSCLE13]

I think that all the big search companies including Google have realized that there is a lot more to the internet world than just search. You have to retain your users in a variety of ways. Look at Google's expansion into GMail, news and blogs for example. They seem to be going towards a portal approach very similar to Yahoo. Jeeves is doing the same with Myway, iWon and Excite. Look at all the top players on this week's Nielsens. A lot of portal approaches to the Net. Jeeves just hit its 12th straight week at #6 in home users.

http://www.nielsennetratings.com/reports.jsp?section=pub_reports&report=parent&period=weekly&panel_type=2

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

I personally think that the times of bragging about number of users, number of page view etc. are running out (if not already gone). Advertisers and marketers are looking more and more at the value websites, portals or search engines can create for them. How many visitors can they send to my business, at what costs and with which conversion rates - that's what I want to know along with more and more advertisers, marketers and SEOs

And that's the tricky part of the game. Because on one hand I agree that one of Googles main problems is lock-in, but it may also be why they have such a great value to advertisers: Most of the people visiting Google leave pretty fast - going to "my" site. If you fight to hard to hold on to the users you may end up having no value to advertisers.

[MUSCLE13]

I think that traditional brand advertising has a place on the internet. I don't believe its all about search. Search is a big component but my opinion is CPM's will still matter. Broadband will cause a lot more rich media advertising in addition to text advertising. As in all other media, advertisers follow where the people are.

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

I often noticed this funny thing, that every time I start talking about response rates, conversion and ROI with "portal people" they quickly direct the discussion into branding. The lower the response rates the more they talk about branding. My question has always been: Do the the brading value go up as the click rates goes down? :)

Personally I don't think so. Off course there is a branding value in appearing in front of your target group but I believe the value is even greater if they asked for it.

If portals think that broadband users are going to let them suck up all their bandwidth on their new fast Internet connection I think they are wrong. Users get broadband so they can be more family members online at the same time, so they can use IP-phones, video on demand and such things - not to be able to download even bigger banner ads. Byt then again, that's just my oppinion ...

[MUSCLE13]

I think branding is very important to big companies like GM or Coca Cola and thats why they have multi million dollar and sometimes billion dollar annual ad budgets across all sorts of media. I seriously doubt these types of companies care very much about click through rates. They are interested in getting in front of as many eyeballs or ears as possible when you are talking about TV radio and outdoor ad campaigns and now they are going to the internet as the big companies like Yahoo attract the big advertisers. If the internet is going to be very successful as an advertising medium it is essential that the big S&P 500 companies come to the net to advertise. They make up a large majority of the couple hundred billion dollar ad industry in this country. Search is very important to the net. It is the most targeted type of advertising that ever existed in my opinion. Branding is also very important.

[MUSCLE13]

I hope nobody here thinks I am putting down search. I'm not. I believe search will eventually replace the yellow pages which is a 15 billion dollar industry itself. There is no advertising more targeted than search. And in the advertising business targeting is huge. I just think the internet business has got to look at the whole ad business which is in excess of 200 billion dollars annually here in the US. The internet is less than 5% of that. Its got to grab a bigger piece of the pie.

[MUSCLE13]

If portals think that broadband users are going to let them suck up all their bandwidth on their new fast Internet connection I think they are wrong. Users get broadband so they can be more family members online at the same time, so they can use IP-phones, video on demand and such things - not to be able to download even bigger banner ads. Byt then again, that's just my oppinion ...

I was thinking about your statement here Mikkel. I think it may hold some validity for a good portion of internet users, but hasn't Jeeves addressed this issue with their no banner, no popup MyWay portal?

[MUSCLE13]

No, having watched these type of numbers over the years, looking at changes within a month can be misleading. You really aren't seeing a trend until the change stretches over three or four months.




Danny could you please admit this is a trend since they have hit 14 straight weeks now at #6 in home users and have entered the top 10 at work ratings as well? Thanks!

http://www.nielsennetratings.com/reports.jsp?section=pub_reports&report=parent&period=weekly&panel_type=2

http://www.nielsennetratings.com/reports.jsp?section=pub_reports&report=parent&period=weekly&panel_type=3

[dannysullivan]

And the trend is they're staying solid at number 6? I didn't know that was in question. Way back above, you said:

5 straight weeks at #6. We have a trend here
That was for the June 21 weekly ratings. Now for the Aug 23 weekly ratings, they're in the same spot -- though interestingly, they've lost traffic. They went from 11,606,000 unique audience when you first posted to 10,507,000 unique audience most recently -- a drop.

Of course, it looks like most people had a drop -- probably seasonal decline in web usage over the summer.

I think the point is that no one is questioning that Ask Jeeves is an important site. But the jump into the top 10 from Nielsen is due to the ISH purchase, from what I can recall. That's not a trend. That's not organic traffic growth or loss. That's buying traffic, as Ask Jeeves themselves will tell you. If Yahoo bought Google tomorrow, their traffic would greatly increase. But it wouldn't be a trend. It would be a one off rise.

I guess it is a trend that Ask seems to be holding on to that traffic it purchased so far. What I'm really curious to see is whether they will rise or fall from the new spot they've obtained over the next couple of months.

[MUSCLE13]

Maybe I will get you to admit its a trend after half a year in the top 10. :D

ISH was in the top 10 in daily users for almost 5 years before the Jeeves purchase but nobody seemed to notice except me. Oh Well. Seemed liked an awfully long trend to me, but the second tier never gets any respect. Always under the radar. I will keep trying to convince you :eek:

[MUSCLE13]

August Comscore numbers are out. Jeeves holding at #6 with about 39 million users

http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=498