Web Search Portals & Other Information Services
Industry Profile Report
Dive Deep into the industry with a 25+ page industry report (pdf format) including the following chapters
Industry Overview Current Conditions, Industry Structure, How Firms Operate, Industry Trends, Credit Underwriting & Risks, and Industry Forecast.
Call Preparation Call Prep Questions, Industry Terms, and Weblinks.
Financial Insights Working Capital, Capital Financing, Business Valuation, and Financial Benchmarks.
Industry Profile Excerpts
Industry Overview
The 6,900 web search portals and other information services establishments in the US operate websites that use a search engine to generate and maintain extensive databases of internet addresses and content in an easily searchable format. Web search portals often provide additional internet services, such as email, links to other websites, auctions, news, and other limited content. Other information services include news clipping and monitoring services, telephone-based recorded information providers, and stock photo agencies.
Competition from AI-Powered Search Engines
A new crop of AI-powered search engines is poised to redefine users’ search experience and challenge industry leaders Bing and Google SGE (Search Generative Experience).
Cybersecurity Threats
Hundreds of thousands of cyberattacks are launched every day including phishing and hacking schemes, distributed denial of service (DDoS), malware attacks, and data breaches that could disrupt search engine operations, expose user data, and damage a web search portal's reputation with users and shareholders.
Industry size & Structure
The number of employees and revenue varies significantly from firm to firm.
- The web search portals and all other information services industry consists of about 6,900 establishments that employ about 152,000 workers and generate about $121 billion annually.
- The industry is concentrated with the four largest firms accounting for 54% of industry revenue.
- Google controls more than 90% of the global internet search market and an 89% share in North America.
- Google processes approximately 99,000 search queries every second, resulting in about 8.5 billion searches daily and roughly 2 trillion global searches annually.
- The largest search portals are owned by technology and telecommunications firms: Alphabet (Google), Microsoft (Bing), Verizon (Yahoo!) and Facebook Business. Large vertically-integrated portals include Kayak (travel), Amazon and eBay (e-commerce), LinkedIn (jobs) and WebMD (health).
Industry Forecast
Web Search Portals & Other Information Services Industry Growth
Recent Developments
Jul 16, 2024 - AI Chatbots Challenge Google
- The emergence of AI-powered chatbots is throwing Google’s long standing unassailable dominance in search into question, Barron’s reported in March. AI chatbots have created new ways for consumers to search for data along with providing new options for users. Google alternatives include Microsoft’s Bing Copilot, which features a rewards program that allows users to accumulate points while searching, and Perplexity.ai, founded in 2022 and backed by AI-chipmaker Nvidia and tech luminaries including Jeff Bezos, which counts 10 million monthly active users. Unlike traditional search engines that primarily link to web pages, Perplexity.ai is a chatbot that directly answers questions by citing sources from which it retrieves information, with an option to ask follow-up questions, explains Chuck Price in Search Engine Journal. While chatbots aren’t perfect replacements for Google Search because they lack real-time information, their utility is high enough to replace search for many tasks, Barron’s reports.
- The digital ad market – a key revenue source for web search portals – appears poised for a sharp rebound in 2024, CNBC reported in February citing recent positive quarterly results from the US leaders in digital advertising – Alphabet, Meta and Amazon. In the quarter that ended in December 2023, Google advertising posted an 11% year-over year change versus a decline of 4% in the previous annual comparison. Likewise, in the most recent quarter Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft posted 27%, 24%, and 8% gains in ad sales, respectively. A report by Insider Intelligence said global ad spending will jump 10% in 2024, up from growth of 6.3% in 2023 and the same level of expansion the prior year. “After two years of relative malaise, the outlook is very positive on a global scale and in every major region,” per the Insider Intelligence report cited by CNBC.
- In March, Google updated its search engine “so you see more useful information, and fewer results that feel made for search engines,” the company wrote in a blog post. With the March 2024 core update – the first this year – Google will rank websites with original content rather than those designed and optimized solely for search engines. Included were several new and updated spam policies that the company says it will begin enforcing through automated algorithms and manual actions. “We expect that the combination of this update and our previous efforts will collectively reduce low-quality, unoriginal content in search results by 40%,” Elizabeth Tucker, Director of Product, Search at Google, told SEL. The March core update includes enhancements to several components of the overall core system to be rolled in the coming weeks and months. While Google frequently releases core updates, in announcing the March update the company acknowledged receiving numerous complaints and cited studies about its search results getting worse.
- Microsoft’s Bing nibbled at Google’s dominance last year making incremental gains in the US market for search and even less globally, Search Engine Land (SEL) reports. According to StatCounter, between February 2023 and the end of January 2024, Microsoft Bing’s US search market share rose to 7.87%, from 6.35% (+1.52%). Worldwide, Bing’s search market share increased from 2.81% to 3.43%. Over the same period Google’s US search market share dipped from 88.96% to 87.46% (-1.5%). Worldwide, Google’s search market share decreased from 93.37% to 91.47% (-1.9%). StatCounter’s data indicates that Microsoft Bing and Google essentially swapped 1.5 percentage points in the US. Meanwhile, worldwide, Google lost nearly 2 percentage points. Still, Microsoft Bing only gained less than a percentage point of that, according to SEL. Microsoft added AI-powered ChatGPT to Bing in 2023 and launched Copilot in the fall.
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