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Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Hopkins - North America

Analyst Weblog

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Yahoo! Search Draws Younger Audience; Google Users Big Spenders Online

February 15, 2008

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 | (14) | (12)
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