Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Hopkins - US
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February 15, 2008
Yahoo! Search Draws Younger Audience; Google Users Big Spenders Online
In my post earlier in the week, I mentioned that Yahoo! Search attracts a younger audience than Google. I promised a post with figures to back up my claim (sorry I am a day late - forgot it was Valentine's Day!). The following charts show the percentage of visits from each age group to Yahoo! Search and Google.com.
I cross checked this data against our Lifestyle data. to be sure that we weren't missing the kids of these householders. Our Lifestyle data confirms that the groups that are highly indexed on Google tend to be older (55+) and the groups highly indexed on Yahoo! Search tend to be younger.
I mentioned this to my husband and he asked if the Google users spend more online. Good question (he seems to think young people have no money)! I created the following Lifestyle Quadrant Analysis to compare the online audience of Google.com and Yahoo! Search.
The figure summarizes the audience strengths and weaknesses for the two search engines. Visits by MOSAIC Group to Search.Yahoo.com are plotted on the y-axis and to Google.com on the x-axis. For example, the top left hand box indicates unique strengths for Yahoo! Search, in that they are groups that are over-indexed relative to the online population on Yahoo! Search but under-indexed on Google.com. The bigger the bubble the higher the propensity to have spent $500 online (based on offline data collected by Experian).
As you can see Google's relative audience strengths - i.e. the groups over-indexed on Google.com relative to the online population - are those that are among the most likely to have spent more than $500 online. This indicates that Google users are more likely to be big online spenders.
UPDATE: I've received a few emails and seen some comments in the blogosphere asking for clarification on our Mosaic profiles.
The Mosaic Groups that I used in my chart are created by Experian (which acquired Hitwise last year) to describe American consumers. It is a household-based segmentation system that classifies all U.S. households and neighborhoods into 60 unique Mosaic types and 12 groupings that share similar demographic and socioeconomic characteristics.
The result is a classification that paints a rich picture of U.S. consumers in terms of their sociodemographics, lifestyles, behaviors and culture to provide you with the most accurate and comprehensive view of your customers, prospects and markets. (You can read a description of how they collect the data here.
We apply the data based on the zip code of the ISP account owner. The data is aggregated and anonymized to offer a lifestyle profile for a website. Marketers use the information to tailor advertising campaigns, website content, offers and find affiliate partners by analyzing the offline behaviours and characteristics of their website visitors. For example, a credit card company might find that their website attracts visits from consumers who partake in bird watching and who read airline in-flight magazines.
In my post above I used one variable (propensity to spend more than $500 online) among more than 300 variables to highlight a difference between the visitor profile for Yahoo! Search and Google.com. Hitwise clients have access to all of the variables and profiles not only of their own website visitors but of competitors.
The following is a brief description of these groups to elaborate on the titles in my chart.
Affluent Suburbia: The wealthiest households in the U.S. living in exclusive suburban neighborhoods enjoying the best of everything that life has to offer.
Upscale America: College-educated couples and families living in the metropolitan sprawl earning upscale incomes providing them with large homes and very comfortable and active lifestyles.
Small-town Contentment: Middle-aged, upper-middle-class families living in small towns and satellite cities with moderate educations employed in white-collar, blue-collar and service professions.
Blue-collar Backbone Budget-conscious, young and old blue-collar households living in older towns working in manufacturing, construction and retail trades.
American Diversity: A diverse group of ethnically mixed singles and couples, middle-aged and retired with middle-class incomes from blue-collar and service industry jobs.
Metro Fringe Racially mixed, lower-middle-class clusters in older single-family homes, semi-detached houses and low-rise apartments in satellite cities.
Remote America: A mix of farming and small industrial rural communities with outdoor oriented lifestyles living primarily in America’s heartland.
Aspiring Contemporaries: Young, mostly single, ethnically diverse, online active households living in new homes or apartments with discretionary income to spend on themselves.
Rural Villages and Farms Rural, middle-class married families and couples of varied ages, living and working in agricultural and mining communities.
Struggling Societies: Young minorities, students and single parents trying to raise families on low-level jobs in manufacturing, health care and food services.
Urban Essence: Young, single and single-parent minorities living in older apartments working at entry-level jobs in service industries.
Varying Lifestyles: Residents who primarily live in group quarters including students, military personnel and institution populations.
Posted by Heather Hopkins at 08:06 AM
Posted to Search
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Comments
Results are interesting but not surprising.Professionals use Google as more power tool. Faded Yahoo is for teenagers. Shark Microsoft knows it!
Posted by: Scabr at February 16, 2008 06:13 AM
Heather,
Although there is no significant difference in the percentages of the age groups, the result shows that spending differs more than that.
It seems that your husband is right, thanks for the research.
Posted by: Gorkem Turgut OZER at February 16, 2008 08:43 AM
What would add insight to these stats - would be to reveal HOW searchers get to either Yahoo or Google.
Do the searchers come directly, or do Yahoo users come from the various Yahoo services.
This would illustrate the dependency of Yahoo search on their services.
It would have been nice to get some data about users of :
MSN AOL and Ask - for comparison
Posted by: Search-Engines Web at February 16, 2008 12:24 PM
Any thoughts on why the younger group would be more drawn to Yahoo?
Posted by: Susan at February 16, 2008 03:55 PM
What about Ask? Would be interested their demographics as well.
Posted by: femmebot at February 16, 2008 06:28 PM
Thank you for this very powerful information that you and Hitwise have published. Hitwise has some very powerful tracking features that Professional Internet marketers need to tap into. We appreciate your service and tools offered within.
Posted by: Brad & Kelly Smith at February 16, 2008 07:17 PM
I find the captions on this chart 'of questionable origin' to be ridiculously flippant and representative of nothing. If you really had something statistically significant to say, you obliterated it with your presentation.
Posted by: D.McC at February 16, 2008 11:03 PM
Interesting study, as it kind of proves some of the data we've collected. Yahoo probably has a younger base because of its other properties... answers, personals, 360
Posted by: Shycon Design at February 17, 2008 04:32 PM
D. McC -
You mean the labels on the chart, such as "Affluent Suburbia"?
They're MOSAIC group labels and they actually have a very well defined geodemographic meaning. http://www.appliedgeographic.com/mosaic.html
Posted by: Tk at February 19, 2008 01:15 PM
Hi Heather,
sorry for being so annoying, but could you tell me how the reach in terms of unique users of Yahoo search compares with the Google's one?
There is such an enormous difference in terms of searches performed in Google when compared with Yahoo, but I wonder if this is a results of the profile of the users who conduct searches or if it is just a question of much more people conducting searches on Google.
From the data on your post, I would say that Google's advantage comes more from the high-usage profile of its users, rather than from a much broader audience.
Thanks again,
Gonçalo
Posted by: Gonçalo at February 19, 2008 04:02 PM
Hi Gonçalo,
At Hitwise we report on a market share of Internet visits, rather than on unique visitors. Last week, Google.com was the #1 ranked domain attracting 5.43% of all US Internet visits. Search.Yahoo.com ranked #7 with 1.65% of visits.
We use the IAB's definition of a visit, so a user that returns to Google or Yahoo! within 30 minutes is not counted as a fresh visit. This should minimize the impact of repeat searches driving up visits. Certainly fresh sessions (after 30 minutes of inactivity) are counted fresh.
Here's a link to our latest search release with details on search engine share figures: http://www.hitwise.com/press-center/hitwiseHS2004/google-steady-at-66-percent.php.
For other commenters - I promise to get to your requests. I plan to do a visitor profile for Ask and MSN as well as some upstream data on some of the search engines. Stay tuned!
Many thanks, Heather
Posted by: Heather Hopkins at February 20, 2008 09:07 AM
Its interesting. But if we will have exact number of visitors, then the figures could have been more interesting. Because Google serves almost 65% of audience, if the % of users is less, although it covers many people.
Posted by: Roger at February 26, 2008 04:41 AM
Have you all or do you all know of anyone who as done a study of search engine usage by Race and Ethnicity?
Posted by: Markus at March 15, 2008 02:18 PM
Yahoo is a portal and Google is not. Yahoo has bells and whistles, Google does not. Google is used as much as a tool whereas Yahoo is about entertaining and informing. The younger the users, the less they have and the more they are concerned about things that stimulate. Google is all business. Thus it commands a no-nonsense, older audience.
Posted by: Marc Meyer at April 15, 2008 09:51 AM
