Dominance continues with a six percent increase over last year…
“Search engines continue to fight for a larger slice of the search marketing pie, but Google appears to be firmly in the lead. According to a new report from Hitwise Google accounted for 64% of US searches in October…”
San Francisco — Google’s stock price was not the only thing climbing last month. The search giant’s share of the U.S. Internet search market grew to more than 64 percent in October, from 61 percent a year earlier, according to results released Wednesday by Hitwise.
“Monitoring firm Hitwise, the leading online competitive intelligence service, said that October was a strong month for overall search activity and Google accounted for ‘64.49 percent’ of all U.S. Searches in the four weeks ending October 27, 2007.”
The top five providers of Web search all showed at least 5 percent growths in the number of searches in October. Yahoo Inc. was number two after Google, followed by Microsoft Corp, IAC/InterActiveCorp’s Ask.com and Time Warner Inc’s network of sites, including AOL.
“According to figures from metrix firm comScore, the search giant increased its share by 1.5 per cent, while rivals Yahoo and Microsoft slipped back.”
“Yahoo! Search, MSN Search and Ask.com each received 21.65, 7.42 and 4.76 percent respectively. The remaining 49 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.68 percent of U.S. searches.”
“They are all growing in the number of search queries but Google is taking a disproportionate share,” comScore spokesman Andrew Lipsman said in a telephonic statement.
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Percentage of U.S. Searches Among Leading Search Engine Providers
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—-
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Oct.-07
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Sept.-07
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Oct.-06
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www.google.com
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64.49%
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63.55%
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60.94%
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search.yahoo.com
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21.65%
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22.55%
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22.34%
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search.msn.com
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7.42%*
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7.83%*
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10.72%*
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www.ask.com
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4.76%
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4.32%
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4.34%
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Note: Data is based on four week rolling periods (ending Oct. 27, 2007, Sept. 29, 2007, Oct. 28, 2006) from the Hitwise sample of 10 million US Internet users.
* – includes executed searches on Live.com and MSN Search. |
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However, Hitwise finds that, despite these efforts, Google is continuing to extend its overall lead in the Internet search marketplace — and those gains are coming at the expense of Yahoo and Microsoft.
The numbers represent a month-to-month gain for Google, which Hitwise found garnered 63.55 percent of September’s search traffic; however, the numbers represent month-to-month declines for both Yahoo and MSN Search, which dipped from September figures of 22.55 percent and 7.83 percent, respectively.
“Microsoft and Yahoo have both recently launched efforts to improve their search functions and draw more users.”
The result is notable in part because last month’s results reflect the launch window for Microsoft’s redesigned Live Search service. If those changes are going to boost Microsoft’s share of U.S. search queries, the Hitwise numbers are not showing it yet.
Ask’s October market share was 4.76 percent, up slightly from its September standing of 4.32 percent. No significant changes to the underlying engine appear to have been made in this period; instead, the only really notable thing was a new advertising campaign in which respectable, demonstration –style videos took the place of chicks with swords and Kato Kaelin.
Search engines continue to push traffic toward several key online industries. According to Hitwise, health and medical websites received 45% of their traffic from a search engine. Comparing October 2007 to October 2006, the Travel, Entertainment and Business and Finance categories showed double digit increases in their share of traffic coming directly from search engines.
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U.S. Category Upstream Traffic from Search Engines and Google – October 2007
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Category
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Percent of Category Traffic from Search Engines, Oct-07
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Percent Change in Share of Traffic From Search Engines, Oct-07 – Oct-06
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Percent of Category Traffic from Google, Oct-07
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Percent Change in Share of Traffic From Google, Oct-07 – Oct-06
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| Health and Medical |
45.14%
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4%
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29.08%
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6.17%
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| Travel |
32.58%
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12%
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21.31%
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23.54%
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| Shopping and Classifieds |
25.80%
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1.9%
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16.01%
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6.52%
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| News and Media |
21.03%
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7%
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13.41%
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11.01%
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| Entertainment |
21.69%
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15%
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12.93%
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16.17%
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| Business and Finance |
17.02%
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19%
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10.36%
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30.81%
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All figures are based on U.S. data from the Hitwise sample of 10 million Internet users.
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“In terms of total searches, Google enjoyed an increase of 14.8 per cent from 5.4 billion in September to 6.2 billion in October.”
On Tuesday, broker Credit Suisse set a $900 price target on Google, a new Wall Street high, arguing that the Silicon Valley Internet leader is poised to monopolize search.
“We believe that search is a natural monopoly business and expect that over time Google will continue to gain share until they have effectively reached 100 percent,” Credit Suisse analyst Heath Terry wrote in a research note to investors.
Related research from Nielsen//Netratings shows Google with a firm lead in the search realm. According to recent data from the online metrics firm, 120 million users visited a Google website in October and spent over 90 minutes there. Microsoft sites pulled in 119 million unique users, spending more than 2 hours online; Yahoo, meanwhile, accounted for 110 million unique user visits. Yahoo visitors spent an average of 3 1/2 hours on Yahoo sites.
These statistics underline the predominance of Google within search, and suggest that Credit Suisse could be right when it predicted recently that Google shares would eventually hit $900.