“With the failure of Microsoft’s takeover bid to acquire Yahoo Google has prompted industry watchers to ponder whether Google’s dominance of search advertising poses any dangers for the Internet.”
New York — Hitwise, the leading online competitive intelligence service, on Wednesday announced that the search giant Google accounted for 67.90 percent of all U.S. searches, a 4 percent increase year-over-year, in the four weeks ending April 26, 2008.
While Yahoo! Search, MSN Search and Ask.com each received 20.28, 6.26 and 4.17 percent respectively, the remaining 45 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.40 percent of U.S. searches, Hitwise said.
|
Percentage of U.S. Searches Among |
|||
|
Domain |
Apr.-08 |
Mar.-08 |
Apr.-07 |
|
www.google.com |
67.90% |
67.25% |
65.26% |
|
search.yahoo.com |
20.28% |
20.29% |
20.73% |
|
search.msn.com |
6.26% |
6.65% |
7.77% |
|
www.ask.com |
4.17% |
4.09% |
3.69% |
|
Note: Data is based on four week rolling periods (ending 4/26/08, 3/29/08, 4/28/07) from the Hitwise sample of 10 million US Internet users. |
Although the usual rivals are present in the top four except for a noticeable decline for third-place breath-holder MSN. Microsoft’s confusingly branded search engine dropped from 6.65 percent in March to 6.26 percent in April, down from 7.77 percent a year ago, and down significantly from search share once hovering around 12 percent.
Finally, Yahoo has shown a modest change over time, dropping from 20.29 percent in March to 20.28 percent in April. Ask.com showed an increase in usage, gaining from 4.09 percent to 4.17 percent. The remaining 45 search engines Hitwise measured accounted for only 1.4 percent combined.
Google an Increasing Source of Traffic to Key Industries
Search engines continue to remain the primary source for Internet users to navigate key industry categories. But comparing the results through April 2008 to April 2007, the Travel, Entertainment, Business and Finance, Sports, Online Video and Social Networking categories showed double digit increases in their share of traffic coming directly from search engines.
|
U.S. Category Upstream Traffic from |
||||
|
Category |
Percent of Category Traffic from Search Engines, |
Percent Change in Share of Traffic From Search |
Percent of Category Traffic from Google, |
Percent Change in Share of Traffic From Google, |
|
Health and Medical |
46.00% |
3% |
30.73% |
4% |
|
Travel |
33.94% |
8% |
23.31% |
16% |
|
Shopping and Classifieds |
25.40% |
0% |
16.61% |
4% |
|
News and Media |
21.88% |
8% |
14.60% |
11% |
|
Entertainment |
23.79% |
15% |
15.20% |
17% |
|
Business and Finance |
18.08% |
12% |
11.65% |
22% |
|
Sports |
12.43% |
17% |
8.37% |
24% |
|
Online Video* |
28.88% |
35% |
19.70% |
46% |
|
Social Networking* |
16.74% |
17% |
10.08% |
17% |
All figures are based on U.S. data from the Hitwise sample of 10 million Internet users.
* denotes custom category
Google’s growth in traffic-driving either outpaces or matches the search industry as a whole. The health sector, for example, receives 46 percent of its traffic from search, and Google sends over 30 percent of the whole. Likewise in the travel sector, which generates nearly 34 percent of its traffic from search; 23 percent comes from Google.
“For Google, that constitutes another market share increase. For Yahoo, Microsoft, and Ask, those numbers represent another decline.”
The largest search share plunged in the past 12 months belongs to Microsoft, or so it appears from a chart posted by Danny Sullivan over at Search Engine Land.