The latest search engine rankings from comScore indicate that Google lost 1.1 percent of the search market share in June 2010. Simultaneously, the results show that Yahoo and Microsoft were each up by 0.6 percent over May, but these two search engines are gaining a leg up from contextual searches.
Yahoo and Microsoft use a contextual search approach, which includes relevant search result pages in results presented for consumers’ queries. This can arguably inflate the value of market share attributed to each of these search engines.
According to comScore, Americans conducted 16.4 billion searches last month (up 3 percent from May), and Yahoo sites and Microsoft sites accounted for 3.1 billion and 2.1 billion of these searches, respectively. By this count, Yahoo was responsible for 18.9 percent of searches in June, and Microsoft accounted for 12.7 percent of searches.
Notably, comScore’s search shares for the two search engines are considerably higher than the shares reported by Hitwise, which doesn’t consider contextual searches. Hitwise numbers indicate Yahoo sites accounted for 14.37 percent of searches in June, while Microsoft’s Bing was responsible for 9.85 percent of searches.
Contextual searches aside, Google still takes the lion’s share of searches, coming out on top with 62.6 percent of searches for June, according to comScore. Hitwise places the search giant even more prominently in the lead, attributing 71.65 percent of June searches to Google. Marketers may take these results as an indication that Google is still Americans’ go-to site for searches.
Moreover, Google is making it easier to advertise on the search engine. At the recent Allen & Co’s media summit, a Google executive indicated the company may soon be offering advertisers an interactive video ad platform as an improvement to its display ad offerings. Combined with its updated Display Network, this gives marketers the chance to capitalize on the rising popularity of display ads.
