Nielsen released their search engine usage statistics for December 2006 and I thought I’d share the results.  Nielsen//Net Ratings gathers data from over one million Internet users in the United States with Nielsen tracking software installed on their home and work computers that records every site visited. Measuring three unique metrics, these statistics provide a view of actual search engine usage.

According to Nielson//NetRatings, an estimated 3 billion searches were performed at Google Search in the U.S. during the month of December 2006, representing nearly 51% of all search queries performed in the U.S. during that month.  This is up from 49.5% of searches for the month of November.

Rounding out the Top 10 are:
Yahoo: 23.6%
MSN/Windows Live Search: 8.4%
AOL: 6.1%,
MyWay: 2.4%,
Ask.com: 2.1%
Earthlink Search: 0.5%
Dogpile.com: 0.5%
Comcast Search: 0.5%
NexTag Search: 0.4%

Keep in mind that this statistic specifies the number of queries conducted– NOT the number of unique visitors to the site.  However, Google now ranks #2 for unique audience, surpassing Yahoo in the list of Top 10 Parent Companies in percent reach with nearly 95 million unique visitors on the home panel and 47 million on the work panel using the Google suite of sites and tools.  Yahoo fell to just under 94 million visitors (home panel) between November and December.  Still dominating the internet in terms of audience is Microsoft, with over 103.5 million unique home visitors and 51 million office workers (a whopping 88% reach in the workplace) in December 2006.  A notable addition to the Top 10 on the work panel is Wikipedia, with a 33.5% reach.

You can find more monthly data at Nielson//NetRatings.

While determining which size ads I wanted to prioritize for one of our online marketing clients, I found the Most Popular Ad Sizes as determined by Nielsen/NetRatings.

Times change and as large screen monitors and larger resolutions come out, more and more advertisers(25%) are headed to the largest ad size- a 728×90 Leaderboard.  These are the large rectangular ads that are usually at the very top header position on a website.

Also popular with 16% of advertisers is the Medium Rectangle (300×250).  These have made popular with many sites that like to place an ad block within their content, usually between the article or page title and the page text.

Rounding out the top three is the Wide Skyscraper with 13% of advertisers using this size.  These ads usually display in a left or right column beside the main content of the site and reach quite a ways down the page.

Of course, knowing your target ad venue is more important than determining what is most used by other advertisers.  If the perfect site to advertise to your specific market only allows for Full Banner (468×60, originally the most popular size) or a Square Button (125×125) then you would need to accommodate their ad specifications in order to advertise on their website. 

Well as another round of “latest and greatest” products come into play after the massive holiday gift-giving season, I like to take a look at trends and current stats for what settings and software internet users have.

The stat I pay attention to most is screen resolution.  This impacts my business the most as I like to keep in mind how wide a website design should be and how much information will fit “above the fold” for most internet users (see my previous blog entry for Above the Fold and stats from early last year).

Currently, 75% of web users have a resolution of 1024×768 or higher.  This is in contrast to the 78% that had 1024×768 or lower last April.  More and more wide-screen and large flat screen monitors and better video cards installed in the latest computer equipment are in use than ever before.  However, there is still a functional limit as we humans can only process so much and especially can read text only so tiny.  13% of users still have a resolution of 800×600 (the old standard) and I wonder if that demographic will ever truly go away.  Perhaps we will see trends where websites just start using larger fonts to meet the needs of an aging baby boomer generation.   Perhaps not, but time will tell.

Next, I check out browser popularity.  Microsoft is the giant with 84% of the internet community using some version of Internet Explorer.  However, this is a significant decrease from last year at this time (90%) as Firefox gains ground jumping from 6% to 11% in one year (yep, that is the exact amount Internet Explorer lost). If you want to check out Firefox yourself, you can here.

An amazing 19% already have adopted Internet Explorer 7 even though many early adopters, including myself, suggested that it may be better to Hold Off on IE7.

I hope you’ve found this informative as you build or continue to build your web presence.

This past weekend we took our two seperate existing RSS feeds- one for our blog, the other for our ’standard’ content like our articles and services- and combined them into one easy-to-access feed.

If you are wondering what RSS is, it means ‘Really Simple Syndication’. Simple enough that once you subscribe to a web site that has this feature, you keep up-to-date with new information without having to check the site every day. You can do get newsfeeds from major news networks, entertainment sources, and business news and aggregate it to access it all from one place.

Once you get started, your favorite parts of the Web come to you. No need to go out and check for updates all the time. If you do not want to download rss reader software, its really easy to subscribe to your favorite feeds through My Yahoo or My Google (free personalized homepages).

To get started with the YNot Web feed, click the orange feed “chicklet” on the lower left side of the screen. This takes you to our Feedburner page, with subscriber options for web-based and desktop-based feed readers.

For another quick overview of RSS and feeds seeFeedburner’s Feed 101.

I’ve been dealing with several clients whose websites have been down or not functioning properly due to server issues at their various web hosts.

No host can provide a 100% uptime, but what DO you look for when shopping for a host?  First, they should publicize some sort of “uptime guarantee.” Without a guarantee, you have no assurances that they are at least trying or providing due diligence in keeping your website available.  I’ve recently seen a popular host REMOVE their guarantee from their sales pages.  Not a good sign of things to come for their clients.

So what kind of uptime guarantee is good enough? This depends on your needs and, honestly, your budget.  Of course, no one wants to have their website DOWN ever, but what do these numbers mean?  Here are some common guarantees in the industry today and the actual amount of downtime per month involved.

• 99.5% uptime = Over 3 HOURS (216 minutes) of downtime in a month
• 99.8% uptime = 86.4 minutes of downtime in a month
• 99.9% uptime = 43.2 minutes of downtime in a month
• 99.99% uptime = 4.32 minutes of downtime in a month
• 99.999% uptime = 0.432 minutes (26 seconds) in a month

Based on these numbers, I would never recommend a host with less than a 99.9% uptime guarantee and I would rather see my clients on a 99.99% uptime server.  I only know one host, Rackspace, that gives a 99.9999% uptime guarantee and they only do managed server hosting and is much more expensive than standard hosting.

So check for an uptime guarantee as one of the necessary elements when shopping for a web host.