Could Microsoft Knock Off Yahoo To Become Google’s Biggest Competitor?
Duncan Riley
71 comments »
As much as I would have thought such a post title would have been absurd a week ago, it could happen. According to the latest search market share figures released by Compete, MSN/ Live increased its market share by 67% from May to June 2007, putting Microsoft’s share of search at 13.2% behind Yahoo at 19.6% and Google on 62.7%. Over the year, Microsoft’s search traffic is up 47%.
Despite a $100 million Crispin, Porter + Bogusky advertising campaign, Ask saw its share of the search market decrease from 3.5% to 3.3%, although to be fair to Ask, Compete recorded a 2.6% rise in traffic.
Is this a sign that Microsoft could actually overtake Yahoo to become Google’s largest competitor, or a statistical blip?
comScore’s figures would seem to support the idea. According to comScore’s May 2007 figures, Yahoo Search has a market reach (as opposed to share) of 31.2% to MSN/ Live search with 25.4%. The unique visitor numbers were 240million to 196million, a gap that could certainly be narrowed and even overcome.
Microsoft has the advantage of having their search properties open as the default homepage on IE7, and with Vista shipping over this time frame it could be a case that some consumers are simply using the default search page or search box they are presented with on a new box or upgraded system.
No matter what the reason, credit where it is due to Microsoft: it looks like their search strategy may finally be starting to deliver.
Microsoft could be making some gains. What I find interesting is whenever I look at my Analytics, Microsoft shows up only a little and Yahoo almost never shows up. If combined they are over 30% of search, why does almost all traffic seem to come from Google? I have seen this question asked before, but it comes to mind everytime I see these monthly search statistics.
Good post though. As much as people on this site seem to hate Microsoft, they can’t be ruled out. Although Google is obviously hotter and more innovative right now, the amount of cash Microsoft can continually throw at a problem has to at some point make some gains.
@ Brian: It’s something I see too and wonder about. My suspicion is that Google have developed a very elegant way of adding blog-type date stamped posts to their SERPS. I can only think that instead of relying on spiders, they are using blog feeds to retrieve the data – this means that on google your hot post begins ranking almost immediately whereas on the others it can take a couple of weeks at which time the topic is likely to be stale, hence far less traffic.
I be interested to see if anyone agrees/disagrees with this…
Can we take a quick poll of TechCrunch readers:
Does anyone use the MSN/Live search engine as their default “go to” engine?
M$ haz z resources, audience and $ so yes!
Of course they could do it the EZ way and buy the little shit.
Duncan, I did a similar look yesterday, drilling a bit deeper into the history of using giveaways, which is what might be helping Microsoft. Also charts the Compete figures month by month over the past year:
http://searchengineland.com/070710-105603.php
Microsoft is in a fortunate position because of its gargantuan resources, but at the same time MSN wouldn’t be closing on Yahoo if users found it ineffective.
It’s a good point about the default homepage on IE7 though. Sometimes it’s easier to go with what’s in front of you rather than root around for something else.
There’s not much rooting around though, people are aware and know where google is. If they wanted to use it from their IE7/Vista, they very well can easily - plus with all the adjustments that have been and will be made down the road to the software to make it more “fair to competition”.
@Vin Turk:
Yes, I started giving Live a try as my default search engine and must admit I am pretty impressed with the experience — they have certainly closed the big gap with Google/Yahoo. Not only has the load times gotten better, but I see the relevancy has had a huge upswing as well. But that could just be for the queries I do…:)
I am sticking with Live for now!
Replying to Vin Tech’s post above, I reckon that people who read tech crunch are probably more techie than most and know how to change the default search engine. Lots of people won’t do this
I saw Ask advertising its search service on Google the other day - slightly ironic I thought!
Yeah, I use Live.com as my first search engine. I really like the features and the image search works great. If I can’t find it on Live, then I use Yahoo and lastly Google.
Are these figures worldwide or US only? In the UK MSN/Live search has a… 5% share according to Comscore. A long way to go to catch Googles 80%!!
“World trade means competition from anywhere; advancing technology encourages cross-industry competition. Consequently, strategic planning must consider who our future competitors will be, not only who is here today. “
According to Compete, the MSFT search spike is at least partly due to a big competition/promotion they’re running. You have to use Live search to play, winners redeem points for prizes, etc. So it seems like this could be a temporary situation that will end when the promotion ends or when people get tired of the contest that MSFT is running.
Sort of strange to run a story called “Could Microsoft Knock Off Yahoo To Become Google’s Biggest Competitor?” and not mention that most of the growth is due to this promotion.
As Compete wrote: “If Microsoft can actually leverage this traffic to club.live.com into actual search users and string together a few more months like this, they could really threaten Google’s top spot.”
If that happens, *then* this’ll be story.
Yahoo has lost their way. They no longer focus on search and therefore are losing their market share. I’ve been using Sitemap and pinging them to Yahoo nightly but Yahoo could care less. They say they support sitemaps, but they really don’t.
Yahoo is about as relevant as Ask.com, which is not at all.
13 and 19 percent? Wow, competition with google really is a relative term, huh?
Looking at our logs (about 12K Uniques a day mon-fri) i see ~23% of my traffic from Google, about 8% from Yahoo, and 3% from MSN. However the MSN share has been growing quickly.
Make sure you throw both the MSN and Window’s Live searches in the same MS bucket.
Overall that means that 55% of my Search traffic is from Google, 20% from Yahoo and about 7% from MSN.
Microsoft has been the predominant leader on the desktops for a couple of decades by now and Yahoo is still the number one traffic fetching web site in the world, so a competition is definitely welcome, but I still wonder Why would any one you yahoo or even MSN to search the web???
Google rules that so, if you want to earn money come up with some thing the rest of the world has not seen before or, please stop wasting your money on the expensive Ad campaigns coz they only fetch you an immediate attention but fades eventually.
P.S- How many of you guys have seen Google Ads on TV or even any where else???????
It will probably take 5-10 years before MSN - dominates Yahoo … depending on yahoo putting up a fight or not …
- in that case 10 years; is worth whatever MS could pay to own Yahoo … and be a instant competitor with Google.
- after they buy them; they should keep them private until they can find the perfect way to integrate… the search (the actual names, and styles should be kept private for the longest time)
The question whether these figures represent the worldwide pic or just the US one is really necessary.
MSN’s search engine is a joke. I have tried for the past year to get my site on there, and even talked to someone on the webmasterworld forums that works for them. He told me that it looked like my site has computer generated postings. I’ve submitted it over and over again on their submit form, and that did nothing. Meanwhile I have very good results on yahoo and google.
Yahoo sucks.
MSN sucks.
Doesn’t matter much to me who wins.
Google does not and will not for the foreseeable future have a competitior in general search.
The playing field as I see it is in Maps/Local/Mobile and MS has a chance there. Yahoo has none.
Yahoo’s only hope is to harness all their social apps e.g. delicious, flickr, pipes, mail, etc can create something very compelling, but as another comment mentioned, they are not a search company. Their ad future is in display.
I think the most important and surprising news is that Ask.com actually LOST market share after their big ad campaign. This has effects on the future of search engines, showing that TV ads do not work and aren’t worth it. Thoughts on the seeming failure of their ad campaign?
ORLY! As Richard said, put this in perspective…And backing Tim, second place is still the first loser.
I don’t think MSN will overtake Yahoo anytime soon, but I guess it doesn’t matter unless you’re actually number 1.
Have you actually tried Live search? For any search term outside the top 500 it’s really pitiful… I hope they can improve because the industry needs more competition. At least they aren’t out there like Yahoo is with accidental quotes that search is dead…
Right now how Yahoo is running things it’s a big possibility. Yahoo has been on this ad kick recently. They could start putting skyscraper flash ads to try to increase revenue in search. It may be obvious to some but Yahoo lately seems not to think out the effects of their actions. It might just make people not want to use their services. Shocking I know.
Could the stats be skewed with Microsoft running that game to promote the search engine?
Yeap. yahoo lost search engine marketshares.
Due to cybersquatting.
They weren’t suppose own domain name and put spam yahoo frontpage.
i hardly get any traffic from msn. 90% google 5% yahoo and ream 5% all put together
Broadcast.com couldn’t compete Youtube
Any founders who buy boardcast.com and make IPTV or video websites or video sharing site.
Stock or IPO will be worthless. You can ask investors or VCs. No one is buying it.
microsoft can take a decade to build market share
they can fund a new search team every year for the next decade
they can acquire content and traffic like crazy
this is why they are a threat to yahoo - they have time and revenue on their side
when i heard they were funding more search development, at first i thought it was crazy, but then when you are making $40 million a day in profit, why not?
Wonder if Windows Desktop Search helps pad these numbers a bit. I know for my work laptop, it’s the only decent enterprise search app I can “legally” use. It has a web search function and although I go to a browser to search outside of my own PC, I’m sure many others don’t.
@Jonathan Mendez:
“The playing field as I see it is in Maps/Local/Mobile and MS has a chance there. Yahoo has none.”
I’m not sure about maps and local, but you are arguable wrong on mobile. If you have followed the mobile web, Yahoo according to some estimates has a lead so far (M:Metrics, Telephia) along with Google in some areas. MS has none.
Have you tried Yahoo’s mobile search? It’s actually pretty useful and well designed.
Yahoo - content
Google - search
MS - everything else besides content and search
@Jonathan Mendez: Uh, okay, you’re an idiot. Have you not heard of Yahoo! Go, which is currently leading the mobile search market? Also, so long as we’re in the business of making factually true statements, surely you also know that Yahoo! Maps is also ahead of Google Maps is every measurable metric as well. Do people actually look at any of the statistics before running their mouth in the comments forum? Apparently not.
Remember one thing - Yahoo! is the most visited website, and has the world’s largest userbase, and also has a product in Messenger that retains eyeballs over a very long period of time. Sooner or later, they’ll figure it out. They have way too many positive market forces to continue to have problems capitalizing. If they have top 3 market position in 21 properties and the #1 most visited website in their lean years, imagine the possibilities of when they actually figure it out.
@Vin - Absolutely not. Do not use MSN as “go to search”. Right now it is Google (reluctantly, their service has taken a dive into the toilet).
@Vin - Sorry, thought you meant from an advertisers perspective. From an advertisers perspective we do not use MSN AdCenter as our go to search advertising platform. For just regular web searching on my personal time, yeah, Google.
Uhh…did you hear of Yahoo! Go because of the f’n billboards on 101? The thing with mobile search is that it’ll never take off - the technology is great, but we’re already seeing handsets (iPhone) with full browsers and Wi-Fi caps. Why would I go to specific mobile page when I can just launch Google from my phone in classic web form?
I really want to like Yahoo! but it’s really hard to. Probably the only thing they’ve done right is Fantasy.
I have visit MSN/Live, and I have foud some good tools.
I think if they implement new tools for Webmasters & marketer, thier Web search Market Share will grow more in a short time.
Who cares what people use here. It’s not we use, it’s what the comman man uses.
Exactly and the common man doesn´t care about whether they search on MSN, Google or Yahoo in the long term. As long as they have the search entry form right in front of them and the answers aren´t that bad they will use it. That´s why Microsoft will make further inroads. It´s that simple combined with the long breath of the Redmond guys….
I prefer msn or yahoo I can’t stand the way Google adds are everywhere. There are very annoying.
To answer the Vin Turk poll, MSN/Live is not my go to search engine.
Other comment, I wonder how much of MSN/Live traffic jump is due to behavior of the MSN home page? Until that thing fully loads, anything I attempt to type into my Google toolbar instead gets populated into the search tool on the MSN page and then hitting enter runs the search via MSN instead of Google. I wonder how many others experience similar behavior and just ignore the fact that it was MSN instead of Google search results? Also, when upgrading to IE&, it dropped my google toolbar and put it’s own, very similar looking toolbar up and of course defaulted to msn search.
Ah! The common people…’there are very annoying’. Wager, tell us, what do you use?
I think that we have not seen Yahoo’s last word yet.
I don’t see how that could be. Nobody that I know uses MSN. Might it be that the numbers are inflated b/c many internet browsers are set to default with MSN as the homepage?
But bad news for Yahoo! I went to Google to look up news on Yahoo!
Check out this poll on whether MSFT has a chance against Google or Yahoo that someone put up.
http://sodahead.com/poll/7737/
I think mobile specific sites will still be around a while. The iphone does do full pages well, but they take a long ass time to load over edge. Why bother with that when you can get a smaller page if you are just looking up a resteraunt? I know cause I have one of these stupid things and it isn’t practical to browse on edge if you are in a rush.
Search volume and results in Google is very high. Searchers feel hard to get information on Google. So they move to other search engines t find information required .