Google and Ask.com gobbled up more of the search pie in March, while the other three major search engines lost ground, according to recent figures released by Nielsen Online.
Google finished the month with 64.2 percent of the all searches in the U.S., or 9.5 billion searches, reflecting year-over-year growth of 27.6 percent. In February, Google claimed 63.5 percent of the market.
Yahoo! finished second with 15.8 percent of the market, handling 6.1 billion queries, reflecting year-over-year growth of 1.7 percent. It finished with 16.7 percent of the market in February.
MSN/Windows Live Search handled 10.3 percent of all searches in March, or 982.7 million queries, reflecting year-over-year growth of 0.3 percent. In February, it held 10.4 percent of the search market.
AOL Search finished the month with 3.7 percent of the market, handling 356.6 million queries, reflecting year-over-year growth of 6.6 percent. In February, AOL claimed 3.8 percent of the market.
Ask.com finished March with 2.1 percent of the market, handling 198.0 million queries, reflecting a loss of 0.7 percent compared to the same month last year. It held 1.9 percent of the market in February.
My Web Search ended March with 0.6 percent of the market, Comcast claimed 0.6 percent, Yellow Pages held 0.4 percent, NexTag had 0.2 percent and Dogpile.com finished the month with 0.2 percent of the market.
A total of 9.5 billion searches were conducted in the U.S. during the month of March, according to Nielsen Online, reflecting a 12.1 percent increase from the 8.5 billion queries conducted in February.
Net Applications pegs Google’s market share at 81.4 percent in March. According to the company, Yahoo! finished the month with 9.9 percent, MSN and Live with 5.0 percent, AOL with 1.8 percent and Ask.com with 1.0 percent.
Hitwise shows that Google claimed 72.5 percent of the search market for the four weeks ending April 4. Yahoo! had 16.3 percent, MSN/Live held 5.5 percent and Ask.com claimed 4.1 percent.
Sources:
http://www.nielsen-online.com/pr/pr_090410.pdf
http://www.nielsen-online.com/pr/pr_090310.pdf
http://hitwise.com/datacenter/main/dashboard-10133.html
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