Methods for estimating search engine market share for websites
Several methods for estimating search engine market share for individual and groups of websites are described. Keywords, search domains, seed websites, seed keywords and other starting points are used to estimate relative market share for websites identified in search results at one or more search engines.
1. A method of estimating search engine market share for a plurality of websites, the method comprising:
assembling a set of search terms together with the relative frequency of searches conducted using each of the search terms;
assembling, at a computing system comprising a processor and a memory, search engine results for each of the search terms using one or more search engines, wherein the search engine results include a listing of websites identified by one or more searches for each of the search terms and ranking information for the websites in each search, wherein the ranking information includes the rank positions of each website in each search;
assembling, at the computing system, click-through rates for different ranking positions; and
calculating, at the computing system, the market share for at least some of the websites by combining the search engine results and the click-through rates, wherein the market share of a website is calculated by summing the contribution of each keyword to the website's total market share as follows:
C
=
∑
r
ɛ
R
V
k
×
CTR
p
×
MS
s
wherein:
V
k
is the
relative
volume
of
searches
for
a
given
keyword
;
CTR
p
is
the
average
click
-
through
rate
for
a
given
position
;
MS
s
is
the
market
share
(
%
)
for
the
search
engine
;
r
is
a
search
engine
ranking
:
a
single
result
in
a
given
position
p
on
a
given
keyword
k
at
a
given
search
engine
s
;
and
R
is
all
the
rankings
for
the
keywords
in
the
keyword
list
.
2. The method of claim 1 wherein search engine results for the search terms are assembled for a single search engine and the search engine's market share is deemed to be 100%.
3. The method of claim 1 wherein search engine results for the search terms are assembled for two or more search engines and wherein the relative market share for each of the search engines is determined before calculating market shares for any of the websites.
4. The method of claim 1 wherein search engine results for each search term are assembled by performing a search for websites having search engine results on one or more search engines.
5. The method of claim 4 wherein the search engine results for each search term include a listing of websites identified by performing a search using the search term, and wherein a selected number of the identified websites are retained in the search engine results for the search term, based on the ranking of the identified websites in the search.
6. The method of claim 1 wherein the ranking information identifies whether a website is identified in a search as a paid search result or an organic search result.
7. The method of claim 1 wherein the search engine results include only websites identified as PPC results.
8. The method of claim 1 wherein the search engine results include only websites identified as organic results.