No matter what the pundits say, the new Microsoft Cashback program along with some continued efforts on other marketing programs such as Club Live seem to have worked in June. MSN/Live search was the only major engine in June to post higher volumes of search queries. Everyone else, including the big dog Google, saw a decline. This seems even more impressive when you put this in the context of the overall search market. Overall search query volume in the market declined nearly 5% m-o-m, from 9.6 billion in May to 9.1 billion in June. Club Live search volume increased sharply, more than doubling the volume seen in May. In fact Club Live saw more search queries in June than Ask and AOL combined. Even if you exclude Club Live search queries Windows Live search volume ticked up nearly 3%, pushing MSN/Live market share back over the 8% mark. Rolling in Club Live MSN/Live market share jumped to a whopping 12.7% in June.

If you exclude Club Live search activity, Google actually pulled an interesting trick and managed to push market share still higher despite a sharp decline in volume. Google share increased to 69% despite a 4.2% decline in volume. The story for everyone else was pretty rough. Yahoo!, Ask and AOL market share all dipped to new lows on sharp volume declines.

The overview (excluding Club Live from the market) …

• Google share climbed to 69% despite a m-o-m decline in query volume
• Yahoo! dipped to a new low of 18.5% market share on continued query declines
• Windows Live Search was the only major engine to increase query volume moving market share up to 8.2%
• Ask share dipped slightly to 2.7% on a 10% m-o-m decline in volume
• AOL seems to be slipping away with market share holding just above 1% after continued query losses
• Maybe the Empire of the Northwest really doesn’t need Yahoo! search

If you want to get your hands on the actual data in this post and a lot more don’t forget to check out Compete’s Data Hub.

*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.

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