Archive notice: This article was originally published on December 14, 2007. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
In the USA, Google has a share of almost two thirds of the total volume of online searches, and thus more than three times that of the first pursuer Yahoo. This emerges from figures from online market researcher Hitwise http://www.hitwise.com. Google also leads in reach. The difference is considerably smaller here, as figures from Nielsen Online http://www.nielsen-netratings.com show.
Hitwise’s figures directly reproduce the share of the entire search volume. In November 2007, Google was clearly ahead with 65.1 percent. Yahoo in second place accounts for less than one third of this share (21.21 percent), while third-placed MSN/LiveSearch is already in the single-digit percentage-share range at 7.09 percent. Ask.com is in fourth place; other providers are hardly significant. Google’s share and lead have thus increased compared with November 2006.
The reach reported by Nielsen indicates what proportion of web-active users used a search engine at least once during the observation period. Here, Google was also in front in the USA in October 2007 with 66.3 percent, but the gap to Yahoo (35.6 percent) and MSN/LiveSearch (just under 30 percent) proves considerably smaller. Interestingly, Google comes fourth here again; more than one fifth of users use Image Search. With Ask.com and AOL Search, two other providers still have at least double-digit percentage reach.
“The results from Nielsen Online are independent of whether a provider wishes to be measured or not”, Andreas Gutjahr, spokesman for Nielsen Online, emphasises to the pressetext.de news service. This gives the Nielsen figures for Germany additional weight. Here, Google is even further ahead; around three out of four users use Google search. Image Search follows in second place, again with slightly more than one fifth of users. Only MSN/LiveSearch also reaches the double-digit range with 11.8 percent. Behind Yahoo, the T-Online search (7.1 percent), a regional service, is in fifth place.
Statistics for the share of search volume are more difficult to find in Germany. PrimaWebtools http://www.primawebtools.de and WebHits http://www.webhits.de are two web-service providers known for their analyses. However, they do not necessarily record Germany alone, and there is also the question of how representative they are. WebHits currently reports a Google market share of 89.2 percent, but uses only 46,100 search queries for the statistics. PrimaWebtools uses just under 1,800 counter accounts to create search-engine statistics on the first of each month. More than 880,000 data records show a share of 80.2 percent for Google itself in November 2007 and a further 12.7 percent for Google image search. Both statistics rank Yahoo and AOL ahead of MSN/LiveSearch. The values appear suitable as a “rough guide”, as a Google spokesman describes them to pressetext.
