A comparison of search engine reach
Hitwise, an Internet metrics company, has just released the latest statistics in search engine usage for the US and UK. The data was collected from a sizeable sample of 10 million users. As expected, Google is leading the pack, even posting slight increases that help it pull farther away from its main rivals.
The four major search engines overwhelmingly ruled the charts by capturing 98.37% of total queries. In the US, Google received 68.29% of nationwide searches in May, up from 65.13% last year. Yahoo! was the far runner-up with 19.95%, followed by MSN at 5.89% – both dropping a little since May 2007. Ask.com is fourth with 4.23%, which is a bit better than their 3.92% from last year.
In the UK, the picture is pretty much the same with Google getting an even bigger piece of the pie at 87.30%. Yahoo, MSN and Ask had to settle for 4.09%, 3.72% and 3.07%, respectively. The sample size this time was 8.4 million UK users.
All this Google dominance, which apparently is still on the rise, is sure to pack more ammunition for Icahn in his bid to merge Yahoo! and Microsoft. Even if it ever pushes through, their total search engine usage still doesn’t amount to half of what Google gets. It will take superhuman effort for them to even come close. That, or a huge boo-boo on Google’s part. Microsoft must be praying hard for Murphy’s Law.
