Google Increases Lead in Share of All American Searches
comScore qSearch data for February portrays Google as PacMan. Microsoft-Yahoo combined share of searches shows an Incredible Shrinking Search Engine.
In February share of searches, PacMan Google gobbled the ghosts of search engines past. Microsoft Windows Live and Yahoo resemble mere shadows of their former selves.
comScore qSearch stats for February 2008 showed Americans conducted about 10 billion core searches, a 6 percent drop from January.
Don’t panic, Wall Street.
People haven’t stopped searching in droves.
February is the shortest month even when it’s Leap Year. That’s what caused the sequential drop last month.
In February, Google increased its share of core searches. Across all Google Sites, Google grabbed 59.2 percent of all American searches. Yahoo Sites finished second (21.6 percent). Microsoft Sites (9.6 percent) finished third.
AOL (4.9 percent) and Ask Network (4.6 percent) rounded out the top five.
Google Sites saw a .7 percent increase in share of searches. Yahoo Sites dropped by .6 percent. Microsoft Sites fell by .2 percent.
As always, comScore stats on the five major search engines include partner searches and cross-channel searches. Searches for mapping, local directory, and user-generated video sites not on the core domain of the five search engines aren’t included in core search numbers.