I’m not sure if this is consistent in every market, but here in Boston, IAC has been beating the Ask advertising drum like crazy. It seems like everywhere I turn the channel these days I come across the latest “Can your search engine do this?” campaign. The media spend numbers aren’t available yet, but my guess is IAC spent a bundle in October taking a not so subtle knock at the mighty Google. As a result it appears Ask has fired up the market share roller coaster again. For those of you watching, you may recall that this is familiar territory for Ask. It’s a bit strange that IAC waited this long to kick in the media engine. You may recall that Ask 3D (the new search results layout) launched back on June 4th. Perhaps with IAC breakup will allow them to focus their attention moving forward.

Search queries on Ask increased a full 14% from September levels, pushing market share back up to nearly 4%. This was the second straight month of gains for the #4 engine. October’s gains pushed Ask to within striking distance of year-ago market share levels. It will be interesting to see if this trend continues.

In other news, MSN/Live managed to hold steady in October with search queries increasing in lock step with the market. MSN/Live has managed to hold market share levels above that of last year for several months now following the launch of Club Live. As a reminder, our Live search market share does not include Club Live queries. Any gains on Live search we are showing are organic growth that might be attributed to the Club Live campaign.

Yahoo! had another tough month with market share dipping to the lowest level yet on a 2% decline in query volume. In the past year Yahoo! web search has lost a full 11.5 points in market share … ouch.

Oh and Google search volume and market share reached record levels.

The recap …

• Google volume and market share increased to record levels … again
• Yahoo! lost market share on a decrease in search query volume
• MSN/Live market share held steady despite small volume gains
• Ask market share increased on substantial volume gains
• My search engine may not be able to do this, but it can do this

*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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