Google & Yahoo! Dominate With 86% of U.S. Searches

It is that time of the month once again. Here are the numbers about the search engines market share for the month of April 2007.

According to a recent Hitwise report, 47 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.86 percent of U.S. searches, while Google and Yahoo! captured 86% in April. Google remains very strong with a 65.26% market share. MSN continues its downward spin.

Here is a similar search engines market share study by comScore which clearly shows Google’s progression, month over month.

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Comments

1. These stats reports always seem overly generous to everyone but Google. For all the stats reports I look at on a weekly basis—about 40 websites—Google is closer to 70-80% of search referrals, which would lead me to believe they’re about that same percentage of the overall search marketplace.

   Posted by James on 05/29 at 10:59 AM

2. I completely agree! I just finish reading a study that is called Into the mind of the Searcher from Enquiro and the numbers are way up for Google when you conduct a research from the users themselves, regardless how small or big your sample size is. This research is key as it presents a lot of disconnects in the search space. One of them, which you’ll like goes like this:

   Almost every definition of an acquisition or conversion requires the visitor to cross the anonymity threshold. Because of the reluctance of the visitor to cross this threshold (submit personal info), the site owner may be building significant brand equity or trust with the visitor but is not giving credit to it because of the anonymity threshold. In looking at most search marketing strategies; the emphasis is put on encouraging the purchase, while most people using search engines are more interested in anonymously gathering information. We believe this is a fundamental disconnect.

   I thought you might like it. Enquiro’s research are the best.
   Posted by Alexandre Brabant on 05/29 at 12:57 PM

3. I got something for you which supports the POV that Google might have a bigger market share than what is being reported. For one of the my Client, with the exact PPC Campaigns in each search engine, this is what the results look like for the month of May, in terms of visitors:

   http://picasaweb.google.com/abrabant/BlogsPictures/photo#5070789057100370690

   As you can see, Google represents more like 80.5% of the total market share from a paid search perspective.

   Posted by Alexandre Brabant on 05/31 at 10:15 AM

4. James, is there a way to actually embed the picture within the blog post comment. I have been trying the put the HTML code and it does not seem to work. Any idea? Let me know. Thanks!

   Posted by Alexandre Brabant on 05/31 at 10:19 AM

5. Alex what do you think about the Alexa rankings for top Canadian sites: It looks like MSN is a more popular destination for Canadians than Yahoo.

   I’ve noticed the same upward trend for MSN in my clients’ stats.

   I know Alexa is only a comparison tool and doesn’t show all traffic numbers, but what do you think?
   See the top 100 Canadian sites according to Alexa.

   Posted by Monique on 05/31 at 12:16 PM

6. Monique, as far as I know and based on my paid search results between Yahoo & MSN, I tend to believe that they have pretty much the same - low - market share in Canada. Also, you might know, Alexa provides bias information, which relies on the a very small amount of people, from a geeky population, who actually have the Alexa toolbar installed in their browser. Hitwise or comScore are more reliable sources. What is good about Alexa is that you can compare relative importance of a site vs another. I am using this for instance to compare hellobc.com with bonjourquebec.com, 2 provinces with a similar mandate. Very helpful. The bottom line is that search engines market share in Canada does not necessarily reflect the same proportions as in the US, which is what both of our web analytics stats are pointing out.

   Posted by Alexandre Brabant on 05/31 at 05:16 PM