Microsoft Search Share Jumps 50% Annually

July 15, 2010

Microsoft’s share of the US search market increased 50% between 2009 and 2010, according to data from The Nielsen Company.

Microsoft Takes Big Annual Step
While the top two US search providers, Google and Yahoo, experienced negative year-over-year relative growth in their share of the US search market between June 2009 and June 2010, number three provider Microsoft (represented by MSN/Windows Live/Bing) experienced a dramatic increase in its share during the same time period.

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Between June 2009 and June 2010, Microsoft’s market share grew from 8.9% to 13.4%, a 50.9% relative increase. Most of this growth came at the expense of Yahoo, whose share slipped 15.8%, from 16.2% to 13.7%. Leader Google experienced minimal change, dropping 1.7% from 66.1% to 65% market share.

Microsoft Does Well Monthly, Also
Google remained the top search site in June 2010, accounting for almost two-thirds (65%) share of all U.S. searches during the month. However, there was more significant movement among its closest competitors.

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Although Yahoo (13.7% share of US searches in June 2010) remained ahead of MSN/Windows Live/Bing (13.4%) the gap was less than half what it was in May 2010, when Yahoo had 13.8% share compared to 13% for MSN/Windows Live/Bing.

Among them, the top three engines account for 92.0% of all US searches in June 2010 – a slight increase from 91.8% the previous month. Factoring in AOL and Ask means the top five engines account for 96.1% market share – up from 95.9% in the previous month.

comScore Shows Wider Yahoo/ Microsoft Gap
Using different metrics, comScore tabulated a wider gap between the search market shares of Yahoo and Microsoft. comScore determined Google Sites led the US core search market in June with 62.6% of the searches conducted (down 1.1 percentage points from May), followed by Yahoo Sites (up 0.6 percentage points to 18.9%), and Microsoft Sites (up 0.6 percentage points to 12.7%).

comScore analysis indicates that both Yahoo Sites and Microsoft Sites have experienced gains due in part to the continued utilization of contextual search approaches that tie content and related search results together.

In addition, Ask Network captured 3.6% of the search market, followed by AOL LLC with 2.2%.

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