Hitwise, Nielsen rank Google #1 for searches

Both Hitwise and Nielsen//Netratings have released search rankings for September, 2007, and both have Google leading the pack - once again. According to Nielsen//Netratings Google's search engine captured 54% of the search share.

by Kristina Knight

According to the Nielsen report Yahoo, Google's closest competitor, retained 19% of the search share with MSN/Windows Live Search accounting for about 12% of the search share. AOL (6%) and Ask.com (2.2%) rounded out the top five search engines.

Meanwhile Hitwise reports that Google accounted for a full 64% of all searches conducted in September. Yahoo accounted for 22% of all searches and MSN/Windows Live Search 7%. MSN fell YoY according to Hitwise research from 10% in September 2006. Ask.com accounted for roughly 4% of all searches for the month.

Perhaps more interesting than simple search numbers, though, is the amount of traffic being driven by search engines to key industries. Hitwise estimates that 44% of the traffic to health and medical websites came from search engines. More than 32% of traffic to travel hubs resulted from a search query and shopping/classified website traffic pulled just over 25% of traffic from search engines. News hubs can also thank search engines because about 20% of traffic came from a search engine in September.