Google accounted for 71.6% of all US searches conducted in the four weeks ending Nov. 28, 2009,? a 1% month-over-month gain vs. the 70.6% share it had in October,? according to monthly search-share data from Experian Hitwise.
The other three largest search engines, Yahoo Search, Bing and Ask.com received 15.4%, 9.3%and 2.7%, respectively. Yahoo and Bing showed declines in search share, while Ask.com’s share increased slightly.
The remaining 52 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.07% of US searches.
Longer Search Queries Flat
In what appears to be the end of a months-long trend of lengthening search queries, longer queries – averaging searches of five to more than eight words in length -? were flat between October and September 2009. Searches of eight or more words increased 1%, according to Experian Hitwise.
The same time period showed that shorter search queries – those averaging one to four words long – were flat from month to month. Searches of one word comprised the majority of searches, amounting to 24.13% of all queries.
Bing, Google See Growth to Verticals
Search engines continue to be the primary way internet users navigate to key industry categories, Experian Hitwise said. Comparing November 2009 with November 2008, automotive, business and finance, entertainment, news and media, and sports categories showed double-digit increases in their share of traffic coming directly from search engines.
Google was sending the most visits to the automotive, health, shopping and travel categories among the top three search engines and its percentage of upstream traffic grew for the automotive, shopping and travel categories.
Bing, however, saw double-digit growth among all four categories:
