Google couldn’t grow its record-breaking U.S. search market share beyond 67 percent in December, comScore reported. Meanwhile, Bing continued its incremental gains, as Yahoo’s share grew for the first time in longer than a year.
In November, Google claimed an unprecedented 67 percent market share of searches conducted at home and work. Google’s rankings dipped slightly in December, however, down to 66.7 percent. In December 2011, Google still dominated with 65.4 percent share of the search market.
Meanwhile, Bing grew its search market share to a new company high of 16.3 percent in December (up from 16.2 percent in November). Bing’s U.S. market share was at 15.1 percent in December 2011.
Yahoo, which has seen its search market share eroding since September of 2011, actually gained a little ground in December, rising from 12.1 percent in November to 12.2 percent in December. However, Yahoo was still down year-over-year, as it had a much healthier 14.5 percent market share in December 2011.
With 3 percent market share, Ask remained unchanged in December, while AOL’s share of searches grew to 1.8 percent, up from 1.7 percent in November.
Search results powered by Google totaled 69.1 percent in December, down from 69.4 percent in November, while 25.6 percent of searches were powered by Bing in December, which is up from 25.4 percent in November.
Search volume increased to 17.6 billion in December (up 4 percent vs. November). Google captured 11.8 billion (up 4 percent); Bing accounted for 2.9 billion (up 5 percent); Yahoo for 2.2 billion (up 5 percent); Ask for 543 million (up 5 percent); and AOL for 310 million (up 4 percent).