Yahoo shows slight increase in search wars

The latest numbers are in and it looks like Yahoo has posted a slight gain in the amount of monthly searches performed on the portal. Google, however, remains entrenched in the number one search position.

by Kristina Knight

According to the newest rankings from Nielsen//Netratings, Google accounted for a staggering 55% of all searches performed in April. Of the 6.8 billion total search, Nielsen researchers say, the Google search engine was responsible for 3.7 billion. Yahoo, by comparison, accounted for about 21% of searches (1.4 billion). That is a slight increase from February search results, when Yahoo accounted for 20%, or 1.3 billion searches. That is 28% growth from April 2006.

MSN/Windows Live Search had a strong third place ranking, accounting for 612 million searches (9%), AOL performed 371 million searches (5.4%) and Ask.com performed 126 million searches (1.8%).

It seems clear that both Google and Yahoo are the preferred search engines, however with Yahoo showing a slight gain, it could indicate a coming change in the search wars.

Another change is how comScore, another online measurement firm, is beginning to track performed searches. Rather than simply counting a "hit", the company is counting a visit. That is defined as the total amount of time a user spends on a specific site. According to their February numbers, Yahoo was actually the number one visited search engine, with 128 million unique visitors.