January 2008 Search Market Share: Google Who?
Written by Jeremy Crane (contact - e-mail) -- February 8th, 2008 | Recommend ThisUnless you were sleeping under a rock you probably heard the big search news last week and I’m not talking about Google posting record search numbers again in January. It’s hard to look at the potentially merger of Yahoo! and Microsoft in the vacuum of search. The impact on the display advertising space is far more substantial but I would definitely be remiss not to mention a few points of interest on the search side. The combined search market share of Yahoo! and MSN/Live would come in roughly around the 25% mark among the US online population. You have to put this in perspective though. A year ago this merger would have meant a combined market share of nearly 32% vs. Google’s January 2006 share of 62%. With all the rumors about this merger being in the works for over a year, if not longer, you have to wonder who’s taking it on the chin by sitting on this one. It certainly isn’t Google. MSN/Live has definitely been gaining some ground in recent months but Yahoo! has yet to stem the receding tide. I don’t see the combined forces of these two reversing the current trend. Of course with the amount of buzz surrounding the potential merger and the coincident news regarding Google’s slide in the markets we may see some interesting numbers for February.
Oh yeah … by the way … Google’s market share reached a record level again in January.
Remember January 2006? It was a tough month for almost everyone other than the big dog. Well the good news about bad months in history is that the bar is lower for the future. January 2007 was much kinder to almost all of the major search engines. Relative to year ago market share levels everyone except Yahoo! was either above or at par in January 2007. Month-over-month there was actually very little movement in market share. Almost everyone moved with the market as overall search query volume increased 5% from December. Google was biggest gainer on market share, but Yahoo!, Ask, and AOL all posted volume gains in January. MSN/ Live volume essentially remained flat month-over-month. It will be interesting to see if the buzz drives any curiosity to Yahoo! or Live search in February.
The overview…
- Google gained volume and share posting a new record of nearly 69% market share
- Despite volume growth Yahoo! market share decreased slightly from December
- MSN/Live market share declined slightly with volume essentially remaining flat
- Ask market share ticked up once more on strong query volume growth
- AOL market share held steady despite strong volume growth
- The volume of RSS feeds in my feed reader with the word Microhoo! in the title has declined 5,000% since last Friday
* Search market share includes web search only and is calculated based on unique queries within each session during the given month.
Did you like that post? You'll love these.
- November 2007 Search Market Share: The Market, Google, and Yahoo! All Break Search Records?
- March Search Market Share: March Madness in the Search World
- January Search Market Share: Tough Start to the Year for Most
- September Search Market Share: Back to School Lifts Search Volume
- August Search Market Share: Back to Status Quo
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February 8th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Great article, thanks.
February 8th, 2008 at 9:24 pm
Truly staggering numbers. The resulting competition for the first page of very search on Google has resulted in a frenzy of new SEO techniques. While the fact is with the kind of numbers we see here, the growth of SEO (search engine optimization) will probably follow the growth of Google.
BYTEmeCITY Community Network is extremely interested in the pulse of the web. Information like this is useful to our community members, many up and coming small businesses. It is important to understand that competition is fierce, That even the search engines compete for a market share.
For this reason, we need to provide useful products, services, and information first. But, I digress. My real reason for dropping a note here, though somewhat self serving. Is to point out another important issue. If your at all understanding the intensity of the competition this article summaries. I want you to think about the quality and consistency of your website in terms of what you offer of value to the drop in visitors? How professional you look? How fast your pages load to view.
And for the finally, the reason for this post: I want you to think about this. Once you have succeeded in this massive sea of pages that Google, Yahoo and other fight to bring to the world. Your on the top of the search engines, your full speed ahead… But is your website running?
Did you know that even though you can load your website, and your brother in New York says he can too. That you could be completely black to the rest of the world. Your host can go down, any of hundreds of connections can fail, the server can crash. Worse, outside your host, there are countless IP nodes that could fail. So, now that your at the top, IS YOUR WEBSITE RUNNING?
Well, enough prelude. I think you will agree that this is a question worth answering every 2,5,15 minutes from around the globe. That is, it is possible to have your website TESTED, every 2 min. From dozens of global location or major cities. And, you can do this for FREE. Visit our newest sister company http://www.BYTEmySITE.com Get a free account, know your online, and be notified instantly when your not online.
Thanks for your time, sorry to say so much. Just want to help everyone succeed on the web.
John London
February 9th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
Google’s dominance in this market is stunning. The big question at this point is when is someone new going to enter this market? It’s been almost ten years since Google emerged, and to date, there’s been no player that has offered any competition.
If you’re interested in learning more about a new player that’s just emerging, check out ManagedQ. They’re offering something more than just results. They’ve created a Search Application that lets you explore the result set interactively by just typing. Also, they’ve created a cool extraction system that determines the key “Ideas” associated with each Search.
February 9th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
Well, be interesting to see the reactions in March, now that Yahoo has rejected the Microsoft bid offer. Personally, I think that Microsoft is going to badly regret ever making this move. They just managed to wake up slumbering Yahoo shareholders and put the company on a corrective action course without getting their hands on Yahoo….
February 10th, 2008 at 11:57 am
Based on what has been said thus far, I don’t think Balmer is going to rest easy, until he has Yahoo.
It’s all negotiation tactics. Yahoo is playing hard to get — as it should to drive up the price. My guess is that MSFT will have a counter offer on the table soon.
February 11th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Great Article. Thanks.
February 11th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
Wow! What an eye-opening article. A wonderful read… thanks for sharing!
February 18th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Thanks for your article
February 27th, 2008 at 1:21 am
Hello,
thanks Jeremy for your good article. And also thanks John for your long answer.
March 9th, 2008 at 10:14 am
Google, Google and more Google. But i like Yahoo.
March 15th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
nice website und hier kann mann viel lernen.