Search Engine News Market share

So which search tools dominate the market and attract most searches?

Of course Google is usually quoted by people as the search tool of choice.
Indeed, this engine has established a very strong position in the last few years
as the main players have consolidated together, so that today search is focused
through a small number of sites.

A new report* published by target=”_blank”>Hitwise highlights the recent growth and dominance of 3 major
search tools in the US ‘ Google, Yahoo and MSN ‘ which now account for 5.5% of
all web traffic. Ask Jeeves is the next most significant search tool, but this
receives around 10 times less traffic than Yahoo which confirms that there are
really only these 3 main players in the US search market.

The Hitwise report also hints at some small demographic differences among
users of the top 3 tools. Google receives slightly more traffic from a higher
income audience, whilst Yahoo receives more visits from a younger audience and
MSN more from a female audience.

In the UK, href=”http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/news.jsp?section=dat_to&country=uk”
target=”_blank”>Neilson//NetRatings provide a monthly report detailing the top
10 parent companies visited by UK web users every month. However, as with the
Hitwise report, the distinction between MSN and Yahoo’s search usage and their
general usage for news and other information becomes blurred, so that a direct
comparison with Google can be hard to track.

However, target=”_blank”>ComScore provides the best comparison of actual searches made
on the top 3 search engines in April 2004. For the UK, Google’s search service
received 77% of the searches, compared to Yahoo’s 14% and MSN showing 9%,
compared to the US, where Google had a lower 44% share, with Yahoo and MSN
performing stronger with 37% and 19% shares respectively.

These UK figures tend to be confirmed by the referral traffic on many
websites, although of course much will depend on the ranking positions being
achieved on each tool. Search traffic from smaller search tools can still be
significant and Yahoo’s ownership of AltaVista and Alltheweb will probably see
their usage grow in the future. And then there is Microsoft’s new search engine
due towards the end of this year’

* this report is not available online, but we can send you a PDF version of
the report if you wish to see this in full. Please contact us for a copy.

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