Google Gains U.S. Search Market Share In October, But Growth Slows

ComScore released its October search-engine market share figures for the U.S. last night. Overall search volume grew 20.1 percent year-over-year to 12.6 billion queries, a decline in growth from the 25.5 percent pace we saw in September, but still quite healthy. Correspondingly, the annual growth in Google’s U.S. search volume slowed from 38.6 percent in September to 29.6 percent in October. Google still managed to eke out an overall market share gain of 0.2 point to 63.1 percent.

Yahoo’s market share rose 0.3 point to 20.5 percent, Microsoft’s remained flat at 8.5 percent, Ask’s dropped 0.1 point to 4.2 percent, and AOL’s dropped 0.4 point to 3.7 percent. (See chart above, courtesy of Citi analyst Mark Mahaney).

While Google’s growth rate slowed in October, both Yahoo’s and Microsoft’s picked up speed. Yahoo’ s U.S. search volume grew 7.7 percent (up 0.6) and Microsoft’s grew 4.2 percent (up 1.2). Together they still only account for 29 percent of U.S. search market share.