“Nielsen Online Announces April U.S. Search Share Rankings.”
New York — Since a long time, Yahoo remained the U.S.’s highly-visited website and Google was the most popular search engine. But that trend has now changed as Google Inc. now becomes both the country’s top-visited website as well as the most popular search engine; surpassing Yahoo Inc. to become the most popular web brand in the United States, according to reports released by Nielsen.
Figures compiled for the month of April by Nielsen Online shows that Google surpassed Yahoo’s unique search shares for the first time by 466,000, giving it an audience of about 141 million surfers in the US.
Top search providers, ranked by total searches. Searches represent the total number of queries conducted at the provider.
|
Table 1: Top 10 Search Providers for April 2008, |
||||
|
Provider |
Searches |
YOY |
Share of |
|
|
1. |
Google Search |
5,109,444 |
35.4% |
62.0% |
|
2. |
Yahoo! Search |
1,446,410 |
-3.4% |
17.5% |
|
3. |
MSN/Windows Live Search |
796,038 |
30.0% |
9.7% |
|
4. |
AOL Search |
352,039 |
-5.1% |
4.3% |
|
5. |
Ask.com Search |
171,545 |
35.8% |
2.1% |
|
6. |
My Web Search |
57,057 |
-16.0% |
0.7% |
|
7. |
Comcast Search |
46,156 |
31.0% |
0.6% |
|
8. |
AT&T Worldnet Search |
28,059 |
200.9% |
0.3% |
|
9. |
NexTag Search |
21,996 |
25.4% |
0.3% |
|
10. |
My Way Search |
16,742 |
-37.6% |
0.2% |
Example: An estimated 5.1billion search queries were conducted at Google Search, representing 62 percent of all search queries conducted during the given time period.
Nielsen roundup that Google’s YouTube video-sharing site, and other web properties including the Gmail e-mail service, online calendar and online payments system are attracting users even as they remain less popular than the company’s search engine.
Besides, Time Warner Inc.’s AOL ranked at No. 4 according to the survey, followed by News Corp.’s Fox Interactive Media. Total visitors to U.S. websites rose about seven per cent to more than 190.7 million in April from 178.1 million a year ago.
Google’s unique audience in April was 141.1 million, which is an 18% increase over the same month in 2007. Yahoo grew 7% to 140.6 million, and Microsoft, as expected, pulled in at third with 121 million.
Just in the past week, Hitwise also reported Google striking a new record. Microsoft also dips below the 10 percent mark for the first time.
In the UK, the most up to date figures from Nielsen Online show that Google is the clear leader with 28.1 million unique visitors compared to second-placed MSN/Windows Live which is visited by 18 million.
“Losing the high status certainly is a frustration to Yahoo, who is presently trying to spin their company and deflect takeovers.”
Looking at the overall scenario, May 2008’s stats will be more interesting to take a look at next month, to see whether Yahoo can come back and close the gap and regain their crown, or whether Google can continue the trend and widen the gap.