Google keeps gaining search market share in the U.S., but its global dominance is not as great as previously indicated.  Last night, comScore released its search market share and query growth numbers for July and Lehman Brothers reported the numbers in a note this morning.

Here are the main search market share percentage numbers in the U.S. from comScore:

Company—–July search share—Change from June, 2008

Google:                    61.9                           +0.4

Yahoo:                     20.5                            -0.4

AOL:                          4.5                           +0.2

Microsoft:                  8.9                             -0.3

Ask:                           4.2                           +0.1

According to the latest search query and market share numbers from comScore for July, Google’s U.S. market share inched upward to 61.9 percent (from 61.5 percent in June).  While Google gained 0.4 percentage points in market share inJuly, yahoo lost the same amount.

And its search query volume in the U.S. held steady at a healthy 33.2 percent year-over-year rate (and accelreated slightly to 11.7 percent on a quarter-over-quarter basis).  That quarter-over-quarter rate is what caused investor concern earlier this year, when it troughed at -0.3 percent in February.  Since then it has re-accelerated every month to 4.4 percent in March, 6.1 percent in April, 9.9 percent in May, 10.0 percent in June, and now 11.7 percent in July.

Woldwide, Google’s search share declined from 67.9 percent in June to 64.1 percent in July. This drop was largely due changes in the way comScore measures search and Web traffic in China, Brazil, and Russia.  As a result, Baidu’s global search market share went from 7.7 percent in June to 12.9 percent in July (based almost entirely on its strength in China alone).  That makes Baidu the third largest search engine the world after Yahoo.

What the recalculation highlights is that Google faces more challenges to its dominance abroad than in the U.S.  Baidu’s global quarter-over-quarter search query volume grew 98 percent in July, compared to 3.2 percent global growth for Google.

Here are the global numbers with Baidu (China) and NHN (South Korea Russia):

Company—–July search share—–Change from June, 2008

Google:                    64.1                                  -3.8

Yahoo:                     14.6                                  -1.0

Baidu                       12.9                                  +5.2

Microsoft:                  3.6                                   -0.2

NHN                          2.1                                  -0.2

Ask:                           1.6                                  -0.1

AOL:                            1.0                                  -0.1

The University of Michigan’s quarterly customer satisfaction index came out today, and in the Website category Google came out on top with a score of 86 out of 100 (up 10 percent from last year). Yahoo slipped 3 percent to a score of 77. MSN’s score was flat at 75, and tied with NYTimes.com and ABCNews.com. AOL came in at 69, and that is 3 percent better than last year.

Here are some select scores, with the comparable 2007 numbers in parentheses:

American Customer Satisfaction Index Scores (2nd Quarter, 2008)

Google:                86 (78)
Yahoo:                 77 (79)
MSNBC.com:        76 (74)
ABCNews.com:     75 (74)
MSN:                   75 (75)
NYTimes.com:      75 (73)
Ask:                    74 (75
CNN.com:            73 (73)
USAToday.com:    73 (72)
AOL:                   69 (67)

The only surprise here is Google’s massive jump. Is it really doing that much of a better job than last year, or is it just that its halo effect keeps growing?

(Photo by Bing Ramos).

Rumors last week that Ask, the IAC-owned search engine, was about to cut 100 jobs overestimated the body count. In fact, Ask is trimming 40 jobs, or about 8 percent of its workforce. Newly appointed CEO Jim Safka, who replaced Jim Lanzone, is also going to refocus the brand to go after women in their late 30s and older, who already make up a disproportionate amount of Ask’s users (65 percent).

No word on what will happen to Ask’s Teoma search technology (the rumor was that Google would be replacing it, since it already handles Ask’s search advertising). Safka is obviously taking more of a marketing than a technology approach. But without improving actual search results (with technology), Ask is going to have a tough time maintaining its 4.5 percent market share. Ask’s search sites collectively brought in 41 million unique U.S. visitors in January, which was up from December and November, but still below October’s 44 million, according to comScore.

Ask is rumored to be considering switching to Google for search and subsequently downsizing its engineering team.

According to Silicon Alley Insider, Ask may abandon or selling its Teoma search engine in favor of using Google for its search results. Teoma has powered Ask since it was acquired in September 2001. The decision will result in “bad news for Ask Engineers.”

Paid Content puts the downsizing figure at 100 in April, although they note that the final decision on the switch to Google hasn’t been signed off on yet.

The decision to abandon Ask’s in-house search engine comes following a $100 million advertising campaign in 2007 that succeeded in growing Ask’s market share, but not to a significant level in the overall market. Google already provides Ask with its search ads through a recently renegotiated, five-year, $3.5 billion deal.

Silicon Alley Insider reports that Ask has just launched a news site called Big News in partnership with Digg that, from the looks of things, only partially incorporates social news functionality.

There were rumors just earlier this week that Digg was white labeling its technology for Ask. However, Big News is more akin to Google News or TechMeme than to Digg. The bulk of the news items collected and displayed from around the web are identified algorithmically, not socially.

Digg’s only clear influence on Big News shows up in the footer of the site, where you can view the current top five Diggs and five stories collected by Big News algorithmically that haven’t been Dugg yet. This real estate will help drive traffic to Digg and encourage the identification of interesting news stories. What does Ask get in return? That’s not altogether clear, although SAI hears that “Digg ratings factor into the site’s algorithm.”

While Google dominates the top slot in search both in the U.S. and worldwide, with a global search market share of 62 percent, there is still a lot of elbowing going on below, especially when you look beyond the U.S.

In a comScore ranking of the top-10 global search engines as measured by number of searches during the month of December, 2007, Yahoo comes in at a distant No. 2 with only 13 percent of global share. (Although, in the U.S., Yahoo actually gained a half-point of share in December, whereas Google dipped 0.2 percent). The big surprise, though, is the strength of local search engines in countries that don’t use the Roman alphabet. No. 3 on the list is not Microsoft, but Chinese search engine Baidu (with 5 percent share, versus Microsoft’s 3 percent). No. 5 is Korea’s NHN Corporation, which operates the Naver portal and search engine. Creeping up on Ask’s No. 8 spot, is Russian search engine Yandex. And Alibaba (which may include Yahoo China) brings up the rear at No. 10.

Shouldn’t the best search technology win no matter what the language? These market share figures suggest that culture and marketing play a big role as well—unless, of course, you are Google.

IAC got serious about its Ask property this year, investing $100 million in the United States alone on a bizarre “Ask the Algorithm” campaign that even sunk to the depths of using the Unabomber as a marketing tool. Unfortunately for good taste there’s nothing like a bit controversy to draw attention to a service and Ask’s traffic was up this year, proving once again perhaps there really is no such thing as bad publicity.

Direct traffic on Ask.com grew from 29.8 million unique visitors in November 2006 to 46 million in November 2007 after dropping to 24.4 million in February for an impressive 54% growth rate.

Ask subsites saw some amazing growth rates, but mostly off very low bases. The Algorithm has a growing market in Europe, with Ask Spain experiencing 2062% growth rate, Ask Germany at 3006% and Ask France with 606%.

Some humble pie from me: back in May I slammed Ask.com for its advertising campaign suggesting that it was too clever by half; I haven’t changed my dislike of a campaign that suggested that “The Algorithm constantly finds Jesus” but the numbers don’t lie: it worked and worked well. Congrats and Christmas well wishes to the team at Ask; you’ve still got a long way to go to catch up to Google, Yahoo and Microsoft but at least you’re heading in the right direction, and competition is always a good thing.

Ask’s full numbers below:

AOL’s data leak. Project Beacon’s fallout. There are plenty of reasons to be concerned about your privacy online, so it’s understandable why Ask would be proactive in letting users control their data with a new program called “AskEraser”. When enabled by the user, AskEraser completely deletes all future search queries and associated cookie information from Ask.com servers, including IP address, User ID, Session ID, and the complete text of their queries. (One reader notes it’s only for future queries) It’s good news and gives you immediate gratification for your privacy concerns. That’s all good, if you use Ask.com for you searching.

The problem is most people don’t. A September Comscore report showed Ask was responsible for about 4.7% of all search traffic in July, which declined to 4.5% in August.

The move to privacy is simply not going to make a difference to their business. Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo have existing privacy plans in place since March, deleting personal information within at most 18 months (13 for Yahoo). Ask announced an 18 month policy in July. For years these companies succeeded with lackluster privacy promises.

The press loves to run stories about the hidden privacy concerns caused by data collected online, but consumers have taken an “out of sight out of mind” approach. DoubleClick has logged user data based on IPs and cookies for years, with only an obscure opt-out option that makes Beacon look pro-privacy (BTW, you can opt out here). It’s only going to be worse when Google’s search and analytics data is married with DoubleClick’s on site advertising information. Only when Facebook was upfront about what they were doing with user data, did people revolt. However, none of these invasions are affecting market share, nor have caused anyone I know to leave Google or Facebook.

We’re finding that people are willing to pay for the best free products, with their privacy.

A strong second quarter by IAC saw a 78% increase in profits, mostly driven by assets sales and reduced costs.

The positive headline results did not flow through to the struggling 4th ranked search engine Ask.com, which saw a decline in revenues. The second quarter decline comes despite a $100 million Crispin, Porter + Bogusky advertising campaign that should be resulting in increased traffic and revenue to the site.

The exact amount of the decline was not disclosed.

After a week where Ask launched AskEraser, a product that allows users to erase their search history, and Google announced a reduction in retained data time from 2038 to 18 months, more privacy initiatives are on their way.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft will officially announce Monday “new policies and technologies to protect the privacy of users of its Live Search services” and Yahoo will announce plans for “a policy to make all of a user’s search data anonymous within 13 months of receiving it.”

The same report goes on to detail plans by Microsoft and Ask to start an “industrywide initiative” to establish standard practices for retaining users’ search histories.

The 4 major search engines with major privacy initiatives in the space of a week and attempts to establish industry wide practices. Privacy would appear to be the new black. But why, and why now?

The Wall Street Journal correctly notes that in part, growing concerns among consumers and privacy groups is driving the move towards improved user privacy. It then goes on to cynically suggest that with Microsoft and Ask it may be a case of the search minnows trying to find a marketing edge over the much larger Google and Yahoo.

A stronger reason lies with Government pressure. In Europe, Google is currently being probed by an Independent EU panel that is investigating possible breaches of EU Privacy Laws. Although the probe is currently focusing on Google, it’s not an unreasonable assumption to make that it could easily be extended to other search companies. The FTC probe into Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick may also consider privacy issues relating to the acquisition along with anti-trust considerations.

No matter the reasons, the steps towards improving user privacy are welcomed. Expect to hear a whole lot more about privacy in the coming weeks and months.

Update: Microsoft has released details of its privacy changes here and its corporate initiative with Ask here.

(image credit: NewSchool)

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.

Ask’s latest musical advertisement is out, and apparently the search engine under-dog can help you find Kato Kaelin, an obscure non-celebrity that according to Wikipedia is known for a minor role in the OJ Simpson trial.

Advertisement as below. I was always under the presumption that one of the key points of advertising was finding a connection with your audience. When people talk about Ask being a niche player it would appear that they weren’t kidding; Kato Kaelin is so obscure the name will likely be lost on a good portion of the viewing audience.