Google continues to lead in the search wars

Competitors continue to inch closer to search giant Google, but the online monster isn't giving much ground. According to the latest reports from both Nielsen//Netratings and Hitwise, Google is leading the online search category by a margin of more than 25%.

by Kristina Knight

Nielsen//Netratings have Google with a 53% search share for August and list Yahoo, Google's closest competitor, at a 19% share. Meanwhile Hitwise lists their information slightly different and say Google accounts for 64% of all searches. They list Yahoo as accounting for 22.8% of all searches.

According to the Nielsen//Netratings report, MSN Windows Live Search accounts for 12% of the search share while AOL Search accounts for just over 5.5% and Ask.com accounts for about 1.6% of the share. With the exception of Ask.com, which showed no YoY growth according to the report, the other engines in the top five group showed significant growth in the YoY category. Yahoo grew about 8%, MSN grew 69% and AOL showed 32% growth.

The bad news is that Google also showed significant growth (39.8%). Though the smaller engines are also growing, Google continues to attract more users and more searches as well.

This is another sign that search marketers need to include several search engines in their campaigns. Distributing search dollars throughout the different engines will appeal to more users and also reinforce the brand because it will be seen more often by users.