Hitwise: October US Search Stats Show Google at 64%

[engine]

According to Hitwise, in October, Google's share of US searches was 64.49%, with Yahoo at 21.65%, MSN at 7.42%* and ask.com at 4.76%

*excluding searches at live.com

Waiting for authority link to the story.

[Note: the authority link has arrived -
http://www.hitwise.com/press-center/hitwiseHS2004/google64ussearches.php [hitwise.com]]

[edited by: tedster at 5:49 pm (utc) on Nov. 20, 2007]

[weeks]

From search traffic, we get over 80 percent from G.

[WiseWebDude]

Same here...now if we add Live and MSN together (because they ARE the same), then Yahoo and MSN are tied for second place in our results.

[zett]

MSN at 7.42% (excluding searches at live.com)

Anyone knows why live.com is excluded? I was under the impression that live.com is the new focus of Microsoft's Internet activities.

[kamikaze Optimizer]

Live/Msn is by far performing much better for me then Yahoo as of late.

[chronic]

*cough* monopoly *cough*

[carguy84]

500,000 Unique Users
Google: 71% (AOL +4%)
Yahoo: 10%
MSN: 1.4% woot

[edited by: carguy84 at 10:46 pm (utc) on Nov. 19, 2007]

[Metaphorically]

The only searches that I (appear) to get from msn/live are ones for very generic terms, the names of months, for example. The text shows up on my pages but there's no connection to the searched term. I guessed in passing that it might be either fake referrers or msn inflating their numbers. I didn't really seriously think the latter was a real possibility but now I wonder...

[europeforvisitors]

A high market share doesn't constitute a monopoly.

Google's market share isn't even that high compared to, say, the iPod's [pcmag.com].

[chronic]

No one has to fear being on Apple's bad side to be successful in the music industry.

With a 92% market share for MSFT on the desktop, most businesses aren't required to play nice with them or die.

However, most internet businesses would fail if Google decided they didn't like their practices, and many fail for just that reason.

[koan]

A high market share doesn't constitute a monopoly.

I agree, and in this market (the web) a position at the top can be fleeting as there are little barriers to entry, just look at altavista, unlike, say, coming up with a new operating system.

Live/Msn is by far performing much better for me then Yahoo as of late.

Live has been sending a lot of referrer spam as of late too, supposedly for quality checking reasons *cough*. Just read this thread:

[webmasterworld.com...]

[timster]

No one has to fear being on Apple's bad side to be successful in the music industry.

That's not what I've read.

*cough* monopoly *cough*

But so what if they are? It's not illegal to be a monopoly. Unless they can be shown to be abusing a monopoly they can gather as much market share as they like, without consequence.

[randle]

A high market share doesn't constitute a monopoly.

By definition that is true. However, the dominance of their market share is not doing any of us any good. Don’t get me wrong, its not their fault, but we would all be a lot better off, Joe surfer included, if the others could step up their games.

[ecmedia]

If at all G is a monopoly it is entirely the fault of its competitors - they have simply not come up with better search. Millions of people use Yahoo and Microsoft properties every day; they just don't search there because of the awful results. With over a million visitors a month to our properties, over 90% of them come through G, despite high rankings at all other search engines.

[pageoneresults]

That's a pretty big change from Nielsen's reporting of 2007 April statistics...

According to 2007 April figures from Nielsen//NetRatings, Google has the largest share of U.S. based web searches at 55.2%, Yahoo is second at 21.9%, MSN is third at 9.0%, AOL is fourth at 5.4%, and Ask is fifth at 1.8%.

Hitwise must be including AOL searches in the 64.49% Google numbers?

Here's the official link...

Google Received 64 Percent of U.S.Searches in October
[hitwise.com...]

P.S. If you look at those numbers closely, it appears that Google's growth has been fueled by Microsoft's loss. Yahoo! and Ask are within a percent or so over the past year.

[AZEvil]

*excluding searches at live.com

According the the page on HitWise, that number INCLUDES live.com

* - includes executed searches on Live.com and MSN Search.

[Bennie]

*oligopoly* people

[zafile]

Whatever. The statistics were probably bought...

Hence, I only follow the statistics from my own Web sites.

I've found that Google sends the most leads to a site that deals only about computers and the Internet.

On the other hand, a site that has regional information on a particular country receives more or less 40% leads from Google, 20% from Yahoo and 20% from Live-MSN.

I've definitely seen an increase in leads coming from MSL-Live ever since IE 7 and Vista were released.

[skibum]

That's a pretty big change from Nielsen's reporting of 2007 April statistics...

According to 2007 April figures from Nielsen//NetRatings, Google has the largest share of U.S. based web searches at 55.2%, Yahoo is second at 21.9%, MSN is third at 9.0%, AOL is fourth at 5.4%, and Ask is fifth at 1.8%.

Hitwise must be including AOL searches in the 64.49% Google numbers?

Hit wise data is logs & aren't the others panels? I don't know where ComScore/Nielsen come up with their numbers but they never seem to reflect the traffc patterns on any site I've seen.

[Rugles]

Not surprising.

The only time I use the other SE's is to check my rankings on them.

[edited by: Rugles at 9:21 pm (utc) on Nov. 21, 2007]

[europeforvisitors]

Hit wise data is logs & aren't the others panels? I don't know where ComScore/Nielsen come up with their numbers but they never seem to reflect the traffc patterns on any site I've seen.

Every statistics outfit has its own methodology, and the numbers don't always mean what an outsider might think they mean. For example, several of the big services consolidate traffic from all of a company's properties under one umbrella--at least if that's what the company wants--and they allow sites to assign their traffic to a third party (such as an ad network or rep firm). This isn't necessarily shady, but it can be confusing at times.

[zafile]

Well, I guess numbers talk... Here are my numbers for November 2007.

My Web site that ONLY deals with regional information on a specific country (the country is quite popular among tourists coming from other countries):

www.google.com 101
search.live.com 95
google.co.cr 77
search.yahoo.com 69
www.ask.com 9
search.msn.com 7
www.google.ca 5
www.google.es 4

I'm showing only the top 8 positions out of 36.

My Web site that ONLY deals with general information on computers and the Internet:

www.google.com 79
search.yahoo.com 16
www.ask.com 11
www.google.ca 6
www.google.de 5
google.com.au 5
uk.ask.com 5
google.co.uk 4
www.google.pl 4
google.com.br 2
google.co.jp 2
google.com.my 2
www.altavista.com 2
google.com.sg 2
google.co.in 2
search.live.com 2

I'm showing only the top 16 positions out of 39.

And sorry, I don't operate Web sites with adult content...

[jomaxx]

And this is supposed to prove what?

[zafile]

November visits to each of my Web sites

Web site A: 367 out of 405 total (I can identify each search phrase)
Web site B: 149 out of 172 total (I can identify each search phrase)

Search engine referrals to Web site A

Google 187
Others 180

Search engine referrals to Web site B

Google 112
Others 37

Web site A has SPECIFIC content on country general information
Web site B has SPECIFIC content on computers and the Internet

Note: For specific numbers see WebmasterWorld message #:3511038

[PowerUp]

Does this stats include searches at parked pages?

[Habtom]

Yahoo sites had 22.9 percent of the U.S. market, a 0.8 percentage-point fall from September. Microsoft slipped to 9.7 percent from 10.3 percent, Ask was flat at 4.7 percent and Time Warner's network dipped 0.1 percentage point to 4.2 percent.

"We believe that search is a natural monopoly business and expect that over time Google will continue to gain share until they have effectively reached 100 percent," Credit Suisse analyst Heath Terry wrote in a research note to investors.

Google U.S. Web search share jumps to 58.5 percent [news.zdnet.com]

Could they ever approach 100% in reality?

[Robert Charlton]

Note that the above-cited article is about Comscore stats... not about Hitwise... but that the two aren't very far apart.

[Romeo]

If you are quoting from your own web log statistics here, please be aware that your logs may eventually be bloated and corrupted by fake-referral-spam by live.search, so check the raw logs carefully before running statistics.

As mentioned by Koan earlier:

Live has been sending a lot of referrer spam as of late too, supposedly for quality checking reasons *cough*. Just read this thread:

[webmasterworld.com...]

[zafile]

MSN-Live might be gaining market share among mere mortals [not us, members of WebmasterWorld, Groklaw and similar Web sites]...

Consider the following:

1. Deployment of IE 7 and Windows Vista
2. Windows Live services. Hotmail-Spaces users are now using MSN-Live
3. Interface, MSN vs Yahoo vs Google

Remember the words of Miguel de Icaza:

"When I saw Windows 95 for the first time I thought 'We are lost, we have lost the edge! We COMPLETELY NEGLETED the interface and they have beaten us up'."

[linuxfocus.org...]

Has Google neglated the interface?

[jomaxx]

Both ComScore and HitWise show Microsoft continuing to LOSE market share, so IMO it's wishful thinking that they might be gaining ground among mortals or anyone else.