This morning, Hitwise came out with its search market share numbers for May, 2008. In the U.S., Google was up slightly to 68.3 percent percent versus 20 percent for Yahoo and 5.9 percent for Microsoft. All the fighting over the fate of Yahoo cannot be helping matters. In the month of May, Google gained 0.39 points from April, while Yahoo was down 0.33 points and Microsoft was down 0.37 points.
In the UK, Google’s market share actually slipped as much as it gained in the U.S. (0.39 points), but it is even more dminant there with 87.3 percent marketshare, according to Hitwise.
For April, ComScore had the trio’s U.S. market share at 62 percent, 20 percent, and 9 percent, respectively. And it has Google’s UK market share for April, 2008 at 74.4 percent. While the numbers may be different—everyone has their own methodology—what you want to look at are the relative trends. Comscore has not yet released its May search market share numbers.
What’s even more telling is that Google is winning the vertical search game as well. Hitwise breaks out what percentage of overall traffic in key categories comes from search in general, and Google specifically. For instance, 46 percent of all traffic to health and medical sites in the U.S. comes from search engines, 31 percent from Google alone. For travel sites, it is 35 percent from from search overall (24 percent from Google). For shopping sites, 25 percent from search (17 percent from Google). News sites get 22 percent of their traffic from search (15 percent from Google). Google’s biggest market share gains (as the primary source of traffic over the past 12 months) were in online video, sports, business and finance, entertainment, social networking, and travel.
So what’s the big news Erick? that Yahoo went down 0.33 points? tying this to the “fate of Yahoo” is a bit wee too dramatic IMHO. What I read in table is that Yahoo is an eligible contender and a leader in the search market and has all the justifications in the world to stay an independent company.
This is pretty grim news for powerset.com. I am super glad I stopped development on my search engine last year.
I agree with @1 that the changes to the stats for Yahoo are within error margins though.
Wow…. I guess its time for yahoo to re-write their search algorithm.
I hit google ~ 50 times every day for searching something or other.
Also just to add…I came accross this site today. I thought I will share it with you. If you are a hiring manager or jobseeker visit http://www.leapways.com. They have some good services out there. Especially the interviw service.
Rob
yahoo was coming up strong, wonder what happened?
So, MSN is down too but it doesn’t make the headline?
Is it an attack on Yahoo?
Where you sent by Arrington?
You taking it for the team?
“Google up, Yahoo down and MSN sinks and stinks!”
There, corrected…
The article is critically flawed because all data has a +- error margin and that margin is not stated in the article.
So we can’t know if Yahoo really went down or not.
SNAP
Robert, I actually think Yahoo has better, more relevant search results consistently. Their search algorithms are firing all pistons in my opinion…
No surprises. I’ve noticed a bunch of new search interface tools coming out lately. I wonder when someone will write one that integrates all major search engines in one place so it’ll obviate the competition. There has to be value in the fact that they each give you different results on the same search…
-M
@Wolfy
http://metacrawler.com/
That’s been around for ages,
@Chris
Powerset searches Wikipedia
Google, Yahoo searches the Web.
Two different purposes.
I agree with Vardan, Yahoo’s search algorithm has improved tremendously over the past year, I am currently using Yahoo more often than Google. In my humble opinion, Yahoo indexes more sites than Google, and with new features such as “Yahoo Search Gallery”, it has made search a lot easier. Many of my colleagues have also started to use Yahoo more, but at the end of the day, it’s your choice and no one ought to tell you what you should use.
What is interesting here is that Ask.com is actually GAINING share. That’s incredible! A company with what, 300 people, is about a point and a half away from MSN, a company with about 3000 people on its search side…
Neither can all your incessant doom-saying about Yahoo (THEY MUST SELL TO M$!!), Arrington.
You must be so excited about these results that you’re fucking your blow-up doll, cigar clenched between your teeth.