Although it is still far and away the most widely used search engine in the U.S., recent statistics have shown Google's market share is dropping, which has some online marketers wondering what happened to the Goliath of search.

Although it is still far and away the most widely used search engine in the U.S., recent statistics have shown Google’s market share is dropping, which has some online marketers wondering what happened to the Goliath of search.

New figures from Experian Hitwise show that the number of searches through Google fell 2 percent between January and February of this year. At 66.69 percent, Google is still much more popular than other search tools, but the success rate Google has with its results might be more concerning to online marketers.

According to Hitwise, the success rates for both Bing and Yahoo (which is powered by Bing) are significantly higher than Google. Although there was a negligible change in percentage between January and February, Google’s success rate was almost 16 percentage points (65.8 percent) lower than Yahoo (81.51 percent) and Bing (81.27 percent).

Google’s Matt Cutts sounded off against Hitwise’s success rate figures last month in a post on Google Buzz, saying at the time, “There’s a difference between an abandoned search and clicking on a search result, but both result in the user searching and then going to a different site.”

Despite Cutts’ argument, it’s possible that Google will see an increase in Hitwise’s success rate in March, which will include search results delivered following Google’s recent algorithm change.