Search Engine Rankings: Google Continues Dominance

Google continued to dominate the U.S. search market in September, according to comScore, the Internet tracking firm. Google sites accounted for 64.9 percent of the searches conducted, followed by Yahoo! sites (18.8 percent), and Microsoft sites (9.4 percent). The analysis focused on the five major search engines, including partner searches and cross-channel searches. Ask network finished in fourth, capturing 3.9 percent of the search market, followed by AOL with 3.0 percent.

The numbers represent a modest improvement over August for Google as the company’s market share rose by 0.3 percent. Microsoft sites also edged modestly higher, with 0.1 percent increase, possibly indicating a cooling off in the interest for Bing. Yahoo! sites were down 0.5 percent and both Ask network and AOL were unchanged.

Americans conducted 13.8 billion searches in September, down 1 percent from August (which had one additional day compared to September), according to comScore. Google sites accounted for 9 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! sites (2.6 billion), Microsoft sites (1.3 billion), Ask network (541 million), and AOL (416 million).

In the September analysis of the top properties where search activity is observed, Google sites led the search market with 12.8 billion search queries, followed by Yahoo! sites with 2.7 billion queries and Microsoft sites with nearly 1.4 billion searches. Facebook.com experienced the largest growth of the top ten expanded search properties with a 19 percent increase in query volume to 384 million searches.

SEO Expert Weighs-in

Practical eCommerce asked , a professional search-engine-marketing consultant, for his insights regarding the latest survey.

Practical eCommerce: Microsoft’s Bing showed only marginal growth this time around. Is it fair to interpret that Bing’s momentum is slowing?

Greg Laptevsky: “Not necessarily. Microsoft was bound to run out of its $100 million advertising budget at some point and it’s expected to see a slow down shortly after. The big question remains: Is Bing going to retain its post-ad campaign share and exhibit incremental growth or are we going back to pre-bing query share over the next few months?”

PeC: Any other takeaways from the survey?

Laptevsky: “I would advise merchants to consider leveraging Microsoft’s Live Cashback Program. If Bing continues to grow its market share, you would grow your exposure with it.”