Google once again leads the rest when it comes to owning the largest share of the search engine market according to the very latest ‘powered by’ figures just released by comScore for the month of July.
The monthly comScore qSearch™ analysis found Google to have powered a mammoth 64% of desktop searches in July. Its closest competition came from Microsoft sites, which registered a 20.4% market share of the search space. While there is a chasm between the two, Microsoft will soon get a helping hand to close the gap when it integrates AOL – which will be powered by Bing under a new deal between the two companies.
Yahoo sites powered just over 12% of searches, leaving it woefully behind both Microsoft and Google. With Google the clear leader and Microsoft sitting comfortably in position two, it’s likely to be scant relief to Yahoo that it has little competition for its third-in-class spot – the fourth placed Ask network served just 1.8% of searches and AOL just 1.2% giving plenty of breathing room for the top three.
July’s results follow a similar pattern to much of the rest of the year, with little movement in the search share portion of the pie for Google, Microsoft or Yahoo! There is also little change year-on-year – view the numbers for July 2015 side-by-side with July ’14 and there’s just a 0.1% gain (from both Microsoft and Ask). Everyone else including Google, Yahoo and AOL have remained pretty consistent in the previous 12 months, although Google has slipped from a 67% share in June 2014 to its current 64% stranglehold.
In terms of pure numbers, the data analysis shows Google handled 11.3 billion searches in total last month, compared with Microsoft’s 3,553 billion and Yahoo’s 2,225 billion. The figures do show that across the board each search engine is having to power more searches to keep their market share ownership static, with the top three all handling 1% more search queries this year than last. Of the top five Ask saw the biggest leap, powering 4% more searches last month than it did in the same period last year.
So what do these figures mean? As expected most of us turn to Google when searching on a desktop. We’re a pretty loyal bunch as well if the powered by numbers are to be believed, and return to the market leader time after time. With the number of searches run on the up, we’re also making Google work harder for us, asking more of it and running more searches than has previously been the case.
Of the big three, Yahoo is the one with the most work to do when it comes to winning over search users. But does it have anything up its sleeve? Its latest service announcement comes from its mobile search division, which confirmed the worldwide launch of a new app, Livetext, which it created to take the awkwardness out of video messaging. In light of these numbers will you continue to use Google as your search engine of choice? Or are you tempted to make the switch to Microsoft or Yahoo?
