July Search Market Share: Growth Continues for MSN
Written by Jeremy Crane (contact - e-mail) -- August 8th, 2007 |
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Funny story … last month I was traipsing around the Caribbean on vacation when it was time to post the monthly search market share numbers. I asked if Steve Willis would cover the post for me. Let the truth be told, Steve is the real expert when it comes to our search data. Anyway, I figured last month would be the same old story. I had no idea that this and this is what I was leaving behind. Blink for a second and the world changes! Well hats off to Steve who did some great analysis and actually ended up putting together two great posts.
So what’s the big question that should be on everyone’s mind this month? Did Club.Live work? If Club.Live did what it was supposed to do then all those games should have turned people into loyal Live search users. And if this month’s market share for MSN/Live is any indication then I would say something’s working for them. MSN/Live query volumes were up nearly 18% month-over-month and market share rebounded to year ago levels. Keep in mind for this analysis we have excluded all Club.Live queries. So that means we’re looking at pure search growth beyond any additional gains from Club.Live. If I know one thing it’s that you should never ever count Microsoft out.
What about everyone else? It turns out that July was a big month for search. Total search queries among the US online population increased a little more than 3% from June. The rising tide managed to help out everyone but Ask. In addition to MSN/Live, Google and Yahoo! both saw monthly gains in query volume as well.
Google squeaked out another few points of market share pushing it to an all time high. Perhaps the law of big numbers is starting to kick in for Google? Unfortunately for Yahoo!, the volume gains weren’t quite enough to keep up to its peers, with market share dipping slightly again in July.
So to recap …
- MSN/Live is way up in the second month of Search Club Live
- Google continues upward but at a slower pace
- Yahoo! continues to struggle even when things seem to be better
- Ask … well … I’m not really sure if “The Algorithm” wants to know about July’s search share results
* Search market share includes web search only and is calculated based on unique queries within each session during the given month.
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August 9th, 2007 at 11:03 am
When looking at M-O-M numbers the difference of 30 days (like June) to 31 days (like July) is an automatic increase of 3.33% in your sample. Granted, how those days fall within the respective months is also a determining component since weekdays tend to see more activity.
Club Live clearly is helping, but the increasing rollout of Vista/IE7 has also got to bode well for Live.com since it’s the default search service. Even with Google and Yahoo trying to strike PC manufacturer partnerships for their own desktop/toolbar search products they’re having to go for subsets of the market rather than starting off from the position of owning the whole market. The fact that Vista’s desktop search is top-notch (and Live.com’s results increasingly strong as well) also doesn’t hurt.
August 9th, 2007 at 11:57 am
Yes, I think we are going to see Microsoft whittle away at Google’s lead. I for one have abandoned Google entirely in favor of Live. Just more timely and relevant search results IMO.
August 9th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
@RustyS:
I don’t get why people always assume IE is attached to MSN and Live Search all the time. When you download IE7, they give you the option right out what search do you want to use. They have like a whole list of practically every search engine there is. Nobody has to use the default search if they didn’t want to.
And like Kyle Davis, I switched to Live Search, because I find it useful and Instant Answers are more my kind of thing. I just only use Google search if I really need to find something specific-like.
August 10th, 2007 at 11:45 pm
http://clubliveforums.com
Club Live, woot.
August 12th, 2007 at 9:56 am
Ask.com for all it’s effort is very disappointing. Their index is still to small, and they make hardly any effort to assist webmasters in indexing. All the commercials and gadgets in the world will not fix their indexing issue….
Melanie
October 3rd, 2007 at 8:15 am
This web page has very useful stuff about share market. It has updated as well as basic information.
October 3rd, 2007 at 8:15 am
This web page has very useful stuff about share market. It has updated as well as basic information
http://www.sharemarket-fund.blogspot.com
October 14th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
Google is cool
April 7th, 2008 at 9:22 am
Yes, MSN Progress is good and steady but they have to do a lot to beat yahoo and big b google.com
May 6th, 2008 at 1:06 am
Overall trends are probably more important than month-to-month changes since there seems to be surges and dips. Google still rules and will probably see near 100% dominance in the future — Google will be to search what Microsoft is to PC Operating Systems. Only time will tell when the people will tire of Google dominance and an anti-Google backlash will occur, just like the anti-Microsoft backlash today that is pushing people toward Linux and Apple situation today. Of course, Apple’s marketing hype doesn’t hurt.
As for me, I switched to using Live.com instead of Google. Not as complete as Google but then it has far less junk than Google does. I can’t begin to tell you how many junk landing pages I’ve come across on Google, more than Live.com at this point.