Google's market share grows at the expense of others

U.S. consumers performed 6.3 billion searches during January 2007, averaging out around 36 searches each. Which website performed the majority of those searches? Google, of course.

by Helen Leggatt

In fact, Google handled and impressive 53 percent of all web search queries, up almost 5 percent from January, 2006, according to new Nielsen//NetRatings figures.

In contrast, Nielsen//NetRatings found that Yahoo registered a 0.5 percent increase from last December. MSN’s share fell from 11 percent to around 8.9 percent in the last twelve months, its traffic being lost to Yahoo and Google, and some of the other smaller websites suffered too.

Compete.com, on the other hand, puts Google’s market share slightly higher at 61.1 percent with 23.1 percent for Yahoo and 8.5 percent for MSN. In fact, there are slight variances between many of the major web metrics companies such as comScore and NetApplications. But whichever figures you consult, the overriding picture is the same - Google is outpacing everyone else and MSN, despite receiving major investment, are losing ground.

The recent launch of Microsoft’s Vista, which has MSN/Live installed as its default search engine, may yet see the search engine fortunes of the giant turn around, unless users bother to change it to Google or Yahoo.

Tags: comScore, market share, Microsoft, MSN, NetApplications, Nielsen//NetRatings, search engines