Can You Search Me Now?

Having recently re-upped a cell phone contract I was thinking about cell phone competition. Competition for web searches that is.

So I pitted two biggies (one my provider) against each other. In this death match we have Verizon vs. Cingular. And with the recent purchase (and un-branding) of Cingular by AT&T, we threw that in for fun.

The results are easy to see. Verizon is the big talker. Even as the iPhone was hitting shelves (for AT&T), Verizon sees a bump in traffic. Very interesting.

Even going back to early 2004 Cingular makes a good showing, holding its own, but never can reach the level of search time that Verizon receives. Add in the new AT&T branding and the iPhone and you get a slight bounce around the iPhone launch.

Finally I noticed something strange... AT&T has removed the Cingular brand, but it's plain to see that Cingular was stomping AT&T on web search traffic. Hmmm... I didn't like the removal of the Cingular brand in the beginning and I like it less now. Why would you remove a brand that gets more web traffic?

Oh well, I'm sure Verizon's thrilled.