Yahoo’s Short Lived Comeback Proves Why the Mobile Market Matters
Yahoo’s search market comeback looks to be short lived. According to a new analysis released by comScore, the search engine lost 0.2 percent of its market share between January and February of this year. While this drop may seem insignificant, it’s important to note the percentage represents nearly 34 million monthly searches.
A few months back, we covered how Mozilla’s decision to make Yahoo the default search engine in the Firefox browser boosted Yahoo’s market share to its highest levels since 2009. We were also quick to predict this trend would not continue for long due to Mozilla’s feeble grasp on the mobile market, an increasingly important factor in 2015. Unfortunately for Yahoo, we were right.
In the beginning of March, ComputerWorld.com’s Gregg Keizer quipped that Firefox risks “making the endangered species list for browsers,” citing Mozilla’s lowest market share since 2006, just two years after the browser’s original release date. While Firefox shares of the desktop market are on a modest decline, it’s overall average is dramatically weighted down by mobile statistics, where Firefox ranks dead last. To put that in perspective, Internet Explorer – a legacy browsing platform so disappointing that Microsoft has decided to replace it later this year – possesses 4X the mobile market share held by Firefox. And no search engine is going to stay above water when it’s tied to a drowning browser.
Implications for Apartment Marketing Strategies
So, how does Yahoo’s faltering grip on the search market affect your apartment marketing strategy?
For one thing, it may be wise to divert spend from Yahoo and allocate your paid ad budgets to Google’s network. While you certainly shouldn’t pull all resources from Yahoo, you should put your best effort into the biggest markets.
The real story here, however, is mobile influence. Had Firefox made a power grab to secure default browser status on popular mobile device platforms a few years back, Yahoo’s search market share would certainly be on the up and up. And this should serve as a wakeup call to any brand that has yet to embrace a mobile marketing strategy.
If a power duo like Mozilla and Yahoo are dragged through the dirt by mobile’s influence, the same fate awaits any brand that fails to embrace responsive, mobile-friendly approaches to marketing.
Photo Credit: By Google_wordmark.svg | Public domain from Wikimedia Commons