Understanding Google My Business & Local Search
Google Maps gaining market share vs. MapQuest
Heather Hopkins at Hitwise has analyzed MapQuest and Google Maps traffic trends in her post GoogleMaps Making Inroads Against Leader, Mapquest that clearly demonstrates how Google controls their own traffic destiny.
Her main points:
• US visits to Maps websites is up 10% year on year and MapQuest is still the leader, receiving more than half of all US visits to Maps websites last week. However, Google Maps is gaining fast.
•Traffic to MapQuest has remained flat year on year and is down 20% in the past 6 months.
•Google Maps traffic is up 135% year on year and is up 7% in the past 6 months.
•The growth for Google Maps is from traffic from the Google search engine.
•This can’t really be attributed to an increase in consumers looking for Google Maps.
•Google sends more of its own traffic to Google Maps than to Mapquest, a change that occurred last March.
It was actually last February when Google expanded the Local OneBox, and they made clear their ability to drive search traffic to Maps. With Universal Search and their increased use of the Plus Box in the main search results and Adwords & their use of addresses in Adwords, they are also demonstrating their power to keep users from needing any additional mapping product as well. The static market share of MapQuest and the declining share of Yahoo demonstrates why it is Google’s game to loose.
An excellent analysis of these larger issues by Greg Sterling can be found at SearchEngineLand.
© Copyright 2024 - MIKE BLUMENTHAL, ALL RIGHT RESERVED.
Comments
5 Comments
Nice article and nice comments from Greg. I’m sure the increase is a direct result of injecting maps into organic searches. I hadn’t thought about the business issue with regard to the competing engines and owners of different maps products.
Regardless, the information within maps products needs to be cleaned and improved more quickly. Its been a year since Google made this change that has dramatically enhanced traffic into its maps products. Google is monetizing the traffic by increasing opportunities to advertise directly within maps traffic.
Now its about time they spend more time correcting problems with Maps.
Hey EarlPearl
Been missing your insights of late.
Yes, Google has its share of data integrity and system problems but it appears to me in the review I did recently of restaurants in Buffalo that the top 16 were of better quality than a year ago. So while the quality issues are real maybe there is hope.
Mike
[…] Google strives for market share gains they have used a number of techniques to increase maps usage. They have extracted significant gains […]
Google Maps gagne des parts de marché
Voici les conclusions de cette petite étude réalisée par Hitwise :
le trafic US des sites cartographiques a progressé de 10% en 1 an (pour ma part ce chiffre m’étonne, je pensais que ça progressait beaucoup plus vite)
MapQuest est encore…
[…] available beyond the three listings” to mean that Google is striving for more Maps traffic in their competitive maps battle. It will be interesting to look at the Hitwise data to see if there is a similar increase to last […]
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