Google Gains in Search at Microsoft, Yahoo Expense

Web site traffic watcher ComScore released figures this week that reveal Google's dominance is growing, when it comes to search, at the expense of Microsoft's search destinations and Yahoo, who continue to lose market share.

According to ComScore in July 11.8 billion queries were typed into search boxes in the U.S., registering a total 2 percent rise from June. Only three search engines recorded an increase in market share, with Google as a leader. In the U.S. Google's search share rose 0.4 percent from 61.5 to 61.9 percent, registering almost 7.3 billion search queries.

Two search properties that did gain market share are Ask.com, with a 0.2 percent rise from 4.3 to 4.5 and Time Warner's AOL Search, with a 0.1 increase from 4.1 to 4.2 percent. The increases in the market share of Google, Ask and AOL come at the expense of Microsoft and Yahoo, whose share is slowly declining.

Yahoo's share shrank 0.4 percent from 20.9 to 20.5 last month. Microsoft, still situated in the third place in the search rankings, went down 0.3 percent as well, from 9.2 in June to 8.9 percent in July.

ComScore's analysis takes into account only the five major search engines, along with partner and cross-channel searches. The report excludes queries of local directory service, mapping and user-genenerated video sites like YouTube.

Nevertheless, ComScore's reports are not controversy-free. The company was criticized in April for a report on paid search clicks, as ComScore's measurements rely mainly on online recruitment techniques, usually dismissed by traditional pollsters. The search market share report presented yesterday relies on a similar panel with ComScore's controversial one from April, so watch this space for further developments.

Comments

comScore -- like Compete, Hitwise, and Nielsen -- does not accurately measure search market share. They are focusing on the number of queries performed, data which is heavily skewed in Google's favor by rank-checking software that thousands of Website operators and search engine optimizers run on a daily basis.

Although there are several possible other metrics, the best you can do to determine real search market share these days is to look at estimated monthly visitor counts (sources like Quantcast and Compete's traffic estimator tool provide this data).

Google still obtains less than 40% of real search market share, and Microsoft has long since surged past Yahoo! to rank a solid 2nd place.

Microsoft has a very real chance of challenging Google for the most visitors to a search destination by the end of this year.

1Michael

August 22, 2008

10:16 AM PT