Google may still be king of search, but Microsoft continues to see big-time success thanks to Bing, as it saw its search market share grow the most of any search engine during the past 12 months.
According to Compete, Google finished March with 10.4 billion Web searches, or 73.8 percent of the search market, down from 74.5 percent in February. It also had 6.0 percent of all sponsored referrals.
Yahoo! was second with 12.4 percent, unchanged from 12.4 percent in February. It had 11.3 percent of sponsored referrals.
Microsoft had 11.1 percent of the market, up from 10.5 percent in the previous month. It had 8.2 percent of all sponsored referrals in March.
Ask was fourth with 2.1 percent of the market, unchanged from February. It had 9.8 percent of sponsored referrals during the month.
AOL rounded out the top five with 0.6 percent of the market, unchanged from the previous month. It had 1.9 percent of sponsored referrals.
Though Google predictably sat atop the search rankings in March, Microsoft was far-and-away the best search engine in terms of year-over-year growth.
Microsoft saw its total number of queries handled climb 31.1 percent from March of last year, followed by Google with a year-over-year increase of 7.0 percent. Meanwhile, Ask saw its volume of searches fall 3.7 percent, as AOL saw its share drop 20.5 percent and Yahoo! saw its piece of the pie decline 23.2 percent.
While the above reflects just Web searches, the rankings were the same when all searches were taken into account, with Google (68.9 percent), Yahoo! (17.4 percent), Microsoft (10.7 percent), Ask (1.9 percent) and AOL (1.1 percent) falling into their rightful spots.
Compete also looked specifically at the shopping vertical “to help us round out our overall understanding about the U.S. economy.”
Google led the way with 35.9 million shopping-related queries, or 37.9 percent of the total during March. Bing was second with 30.1 million queries, or 31.8 percent, followed by Yahoo! with 28.5 million queries, or 30.1 percent. AOL (117,746) and Ask (78,394) rounded out the list.
So, what are some of the takeaways, according to Compete?
Ask and AOL are still small boys fighting in a ring full of men, and Bing and Yahoo! are serious competitors in the shopping realm.
Source:
http://blog.compete.com/2010/04/29/march-2010-search-market-share/
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