New York— Search engine giant Google expanded its usage by 72.07% of all U.S. searches conducted in the four weeks ending Dec. 27, 2008, while Yahoo Search accounted for 17.79% of all U.S. searches and MSN took 5.56% of the share, and Ask.com received 3.15%, according to figures released by Hitwise Monday.
While the remaining 44 search engines, together accounted for 1.42% of US searches in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis.
The other three main search engines all lost share. Yahoo came in a very distant second with 17.8 percent, down from 20.9 percent in December 2007. MSN increased its share by 2% in the four weeks ending Dec. 27 compared to the four weeks ending Nov. 29, marking its fifth consecutive month of growth, according to figures from Hitwise.
For the entire year, Google seized 69.48% of all U.S. search queries. That is up 8% from 2007. A comparison of December 2007 to December 2008 is even more impressive, with Google growing 14% year-over-year.
Google’s unparalleled popularity among search-engine users translates directly into a dominant position in search advertising, the largest segment of online advertising.
Hitwise reported that search engines continue to dominate as key navigation tools Internet users rely on for information in key industry categories, such as business and finance, sports, online video, and social networking. Hitwise found that the share of traffic that search engines drove to those categories increased from December 2007 to December 2008 by double-digit figures.