MySpace Is A Top Search Term

The share of social network marketing was ruled in 2006 by Newscorp.'s MySpace. But, the social networking giant also ruled search queries; a new frontier for the site.

by Kristina Knight

"Search term data is the closest proxy for what is on the minds of Internet users, and is a great measure of brand equity," said Bill Tancer, general manager of Global Research for Hitwise (via MediaPost). "MySpace saw tremendous growth in traffic in 2006, which is a reflection of the increased brand equity for MySpace." In fact, MySpace and related search terms accounted for more than half of the top 10 search terms last year.

Here are the rankings: MySpace (.89%), MySpace.com (.52%), ebay (.42%), www.myspace.com (.29%) and rounding out the top five was Yahoo (.20%). Mapquest, Walmart, MySpace Layouts, Yahoo.com and Craigslist were also in the Top 10 search terms. As you can see, Google and related terms didn't crack the top of the list; Google ranked 17th for search terms in '06.

In addition to dominating the search queries, MySpace also dominates the social networking world with more than one-third of all U.S. social networkers using the space.

For entertainment searches, terms like "IMDB", "Netflix" and "movies" led the pack. For travel and related searches, "Hotels.com", "hotels" and "Holiday Inn" were at the top of the list. Lifestyle and fashion search terms were led by "Old Navy", "Hollister" and "Victoria's Secret".

Tags: Google, MySpace, search engines, search marketing, social marketing, social networks, Yahoo