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January 01, 2007
The World According to Google…VoIP down 12% during 2006
Back in 2004 I started to track the buzz around VoIP based on the number of web hits the term “VoIP” had on Google.
In January, 2004 a search on the term “VoIP” yielded 2.3 million hits. In January 2005, a similar search yielded 17.7 million hits. In January 2006 such a search yielded 172 million hits. I just searched “VoIP" and the search yielded only 151 million hits.
While I wasn’t expecting to see VoIP sustain a 900% growth rate year after year, I was surprised to see VoIP’s Google popularity down 12% compared to where it was just a year ago. This said, given the amount of consolidation that took place within the worldwide communications industry during the past twelve months, a 12% reduction in websites that refer to VoIP seems pretty much in line with where things should be.
Google Trends search on "VoIP" - 2004-2006
(special thanks to Christopher Penn for the suggestion for this graph)
Tags: VoIP, Google, Jeff Pulver
Posted by jeff on January 1, 2007 12:07 PM | Permalink
Additional resources: #140conf events | Watch the Jeff Pulver Show | Jeff's Qik Videos
Comments
Humm...seems there are a few "experts" here that are trying to go into the "tea leaf" reading business.
Simply put, I have been tracking the hype associated with VoIP since January 2004 and have been looking at the popularity of the term ever since. See: http://pulverblog.pulver.com/archives/000477.html (2004), http://pulverblog.pulver.com/archives/001510.html (2005), http://pulverblog.pulver.com/archives/003474.html (2006).
This is pretty simple analysis. Keyword search popularity ranking. No more, no less. And yes it is a one word analysis.
Posted by: Jeff Pulver at January 2, 2007 07:18 AM
Hi Jeff,
You're misreading the data and attributing "results returned" to sites out there on the net. There is no such correlation.
Googles "# of pages" data is not accurate (it's approximated actually) and varies depending on the state of any of Google's (100's of) indexes that you might be accessing at that moment in time. If you do that search again tomorrow, you'll probably see a different figure. There's some information on how this works on Matt Cutts blog.
As someone has already mentioned above, you're also looking at a single keyword search which no-one is actually performing. Searchers have got more savvy than that now - you'll find most people will use Google with a 3+ word search phrase these days.
If you track the accurate data (you'll find your own logfiles from pulvermedia sites far more useful - they will show you traffic levels for keyphrases coming from Google), you'll see the trend is way way up.
Dean
Posted by: Dean at January 2, 2007 05:21 AM
Hi Jeff,
First of all, how did you quantify the number of hits like 2.3 million in Jan 2004? Google Trends does not mention the scale on the graph.
Secondly, I would tend to agree with Christopher that users may not be searching the exact 'keyword' or 'phrase' over a period of time rather due to many reasons including convergence & technological advancements, users may now be searching other related terms like skype.
Posted by: Website Marketing Pakistan at January 2, 2007 02:50 AM
Jeff,
I think the interest of both enterprise organizations and consumers is moving from IP telephony and cheap phone calls, which is supported by VoIP networks, to converged, multimodal "smartphones," both mobile handheld and desktop endpoint devoices, and the practical applications that can exploit them. While infrastructure is important, the bottom line for business comes from people and the applications they use to communicate.
Posted by: Art Rosenberg at January 1, 2007 10:35 PM
Interesting trend, Jeff, but my read on the cause of the trend is different . . . In my mind, VoIP has become "old news", that is, most people that will hear about it have heard about it, so there's less curiousity about it. In other words, the topic is no longer "hot", it's matured.
Posted by: Michael Yokitis at January 1, 2007 09:08 PM
Everyone's probably looking for Skype instead.
Posted by: Christopher Penn, Financial Aid Podcast at January 1, 2007 02:02 PM