Googles search percentage remains strong

At more than 65% of searches originated from the Google engine, it appears that there is not stopping the search giant. The latest numbers from online metrics firm Hitwise show Google firmly in the search driver's seat with 66% of search queries.

by Kristina Knight

Let's break down the numbers a bit.

Hitwise found that Google's search percentage was steady in January and December; in November Google accounted for 63% of searches. Yahoo is the closest competitor with 20.94%, a decrease from 21.40% of searches in November 2007. Microsoft, meanwhile, accounted for 6.9% of searches, down from 10% in November 2007.

Search rankings aren't the only thing remaining steady: key industries continue to receive a large chunk of their traffic from search queries. Health and Medical websites receive 43% of their traffic from search engines, Travel sites receive 32% and Shopping/Classified sites receive 25% of their traffic from search engines.

Search marketers can expect the search rankings to continue to see similar results in the coming months thanks to a new roll-out from Google which allows search marketers to bid demographically using the Adwords platform.

However, change could be coming. Microsoft has said it will bid $44 billion to buy Yahoo. If that buy-out happens, the combination of a Microsoft/Yahoo search engine would increase their search percentage to 27% (based on January numbers), bringing them much closer to Google. Google would still be in the driver's seat, but the competition would be slightly changed.