Statistics released earlier this week by media monitoring and research firm Nielsen suggest that Google continued to dominate the U.S. search engine market in 2009’s final month, as roughly 6.7 billion searches were performed in the studied time period.
The statistics seem to indicate that search engine optimization (SEO) practitioners would not have to heavily modify or retarget existing campaigns. While Yahoo also maintained its place as Google’s closest rival, that web portal saw less than 1.5 billion queries, and Bing failed to reach the billion-query mark.
CNET reports that the numbers represent a gain in market share for Google from a similar study performed a month before. Both Bing and Yahoo declined in market share in December, while the market leader jumped by nearly two percentage points.
Search engine optimization (SEO) practitioners will still need to watch the search market closely, as major changes are set to occur in 2010. For example, Bing and Yahoo are due to merge their search offerings, with Bing replacing Yahoo’s default search engine.
