Monthly search reported from comScore and Experian Hitwise show little growth for search leader Google, but the company’s advantage in the market is on the rise with Bing and Yahoo falling in July. For marketers, SEO campaigns centered on strong ranking on Google SERPs are most likely to drive traffic, leads and conversions, as more than two-thirds of all queries come on Google.
Google’s dominance in the market differs from comScore and Experian data, but only slightly. Both show commanding leads for the company, with Experian reporting a 65.7 percent share in July and comScore placing Google at 66.8 percent.
For Bing and Yahoo, July was more of the same, as the companies continued their disappointing year. ComScore reported little change for Yahoo, as it remained at 13 percent of the market. Overall, the data should please Yahoo to an extent, as it avoided its 11th-consecutive month of lost position in search. Meanwhile, Bing rose 0.1 percentage points in July to 15.7 percent, compared to 15.6 in June.
Experian’s data for Bing and Yahoo shows a different search share from comScore, but the sentiment is mostly the same. Yahoo grew slightly in July, to 13.83 percent, compared to 13.53 percent in June. Bing, the other hand, fell to 13.12 percent, from 13.26 percent in the month.
The status of the partnership between Bing and Yahoo remains an interesting question for the search market, especially as new Yahoo CEO Marisa Mayer puts her first imprint on the company. Nothing has been announced by Mayer or Yahoo since she took over, other than some minor updates to Yahoo Axis. Brafton highlighted these adjustments recently, but Yahoo did not offer any numbers on Axis’ adoption rate since its launch in May.
Ultimately, Axis, while innovative, isn’t going to be the saving grace for Yahoo search. Similarly, new features on Bing, including its social sidebar, won’t attract users to the site instead of Google. Many have speculated about Mayer and her possible effect on Yahoo, given her success in designing products layouts in her time at Google. Looking at Yahoo’s services, the minimalist approach that Mayer brought to Google.com and other products and services from the company may be difficult to roll out, given the sheer amount of information present on Yahoo.com.
