March Search Market Share: March Madness in the Search World
Written by Jeremy Crane (contact - e-mail) -- April 4th, 2008 | Share - Save - E-mailThings were ticking along nicely in the search world with not so much as a speed bump to be seen (set aside the market panic about Google’s paid click decline). Then along came March. Overall volume of search in March exploded, with total queries increasing over 6% and surpassing the 9 billion mark. That’s the biggest month-over-month increase in total search volume since July of last year. Interestingly enough this growth was not driven by our perennial search leader Google. In fact Google actually underperformed the market for the first time in 9 months and saw market share decline more than ½ a point. So where were the big gains?
Windows Live search kicked into high gear in March. Month-over-month Windows Live search queries increased 28.8%, pushing market share up almost 2ppts to just over 10%. Year-over-year, Windows Live search queries were up nearly 52%. Wow! My guess is that there are some dollars flowing out of Redmond that may be driving this. Maybe this April fool’s joke wasn’t a joke.
Then there was Google. Normally 5% month-over-month gains in search volumes would be stellar considering the average for the past year has been about 3%. Unfortunately in March that 5% growth meant Google lagged the market by about 1% and saw market share dip back under the 70% threshold to 69.4%. That’s the first time Google has lost market share in nine months. Oh boy … what will the markets do now?
In other news Yahoo! just can’t seem to self arrest the precipitous seven month slide they are on. Query volumes remained essentially flat with market share dipping again to a new record low of less than 15%. Yahoo! holds the dubious distinction amongst the top 5 search engines of being the only one to post a year-over-year decline in market share. Ask managed to ride the market wave holding share steady while AOL continued to slip into oblivion.
The overview …
- Google market share declined 0.6ppts despite 5% volume growth … the first decline in nine months
- Yahoo! continued the slide with market share dropping another point to a new record low and was the only engine with year-over-year share losses
- There’s something going down up in Redmond with Windows Live Search queries increasing nearly 30% month-over-month to push market share up almost 2ppts
- Ask moved with the market with volume increasing a little over 6% and no change to market share
- AOL was the only major engine to post a decline with volume off 10% month-over-month
- March madness apparently goes well beyond the b-ball court
*Search market share includes web search only for the Adult US Online Population and is calculated based on unique queries within each session during the given month.
Did you like that post? You'll love these.
- June Search Market Share Update: Windows Live Search Marketing Kicks In
- April Search Market Share: Yahoo! Up… A Little
- July Search Market Share Update: Everyone Dips But Google
- October Search Market Share: Query Volume Breaks 10b Mark, Windows Live Search Edges Ahead
- January Search Market Share: Google share slows while query volume stays strong on Inauguration and Super Bowl searches
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April 4th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
I always use Live search and only turn to Google as a last resort. Looks like more people are starting to do the same !
April 4th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
28% month to month volume growth from MSN looks odd. The last time we saw a move like that it was due to Chicktionary and other games that got people to “search” more on MSN. Is there some unusual factor driving growth this time as well?
April 4th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
yeah, what exactly is going on? MSN? Not saying it’s impossible, just want to know why
April 5th, 2008 at 7:34 am
Probably has to with some partnership that started using Live for their search queries. The stats wouldn’t jump like that otherwise. That could also account for Google’s share dropping. Do you have any info where someone big switched from Google to Live?
April 6th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
this is a great site for stats and keywords tools. It just goes to show that google has a strong brand with its users which will be difficult to crack
April 7th, 2008 at 9:50 am
Yeah it’s definitely got us scratching our heads a bit as well. We dug pretty deep into it before posting to make sure it was not a weird data thing. We’re still digging to see if we can dig up the biggest driver. As a side note we currently remove all Club Live search activity so if it while it could be a related promotional event it isn’t specifically due to Club Live.
If anyone has any hard information on what’s going on here I’d love to see it.
April 7th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
The real answer to the MSN/LIVE problem would be to separate the LIVE data versus the MSN
MSN users just use the default search engines
Live users are more savvy
Are people typing Live.com instead of just going to the the MSN homepage on IE
or the Live users coming from FireFox
April 9th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
A few theories:
1. In Los Angeles, I keep hearing radio ads for live.com. If they are doing advertising here it makes sense they are running similiar ads in other large cities to get the word out. Wonder if that has anything to do with it?
2. Sports – As it was March Madness & MSN Sports platform is robust – were people reading about sports teams, etc – using MSN to search?
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