Google search share dips slightly

By Source Seeker on Fri, 02/20/09 - 9:32am.

It had to happen some time. The most recent comScore report shows that Google's share of the search market dropped from 63.5% to 63%, while rivals Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL all saw slight increases. Still, Google doesn't have much to worry about. It owns more of the search market than all of the other three combined.

According to comScore, Google's loss was almost everybody else's gain. Yahoo saw its share rise from 20.5% to 21%, Microsoft rose from 8.3% to 8.5% and AOL saw a 0.1% increase, from 3.8% to 3.9%. The only other search engine that saw a loss in market share was Ask.com, which dipped 0.2%, to 3.7% from 3.9%.

While the dip in market share can't be good news to Google--maybe its glitch early this month forced loyal Google users to branch out and find another engine just in case--overall, it seems, the company has nothing to worry about. While it's been holding steady at about a 63% market share, the rest of its competitors combined hold just a bit over 45%. And with the overall market for search still expanding--comScore notes that U.S. searchers conducted 7% more searches in January than December--Google's business of search advertising seems to be on solid ground, even in this less-than-robust economy.

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The Source Seeker blog is written by Julie Bort, editor of the Open Source Subnet site as well as the Microsoft Subnet, Cisco Subnet sites. Indeed, Bort is the Online Community Editor for all of Network World. She also writes The Microsoft Update blog. If you have an idea for a blog, or a news tip on open source, Microsoft or Cisco, contact her at jbort@nww.com, 970-482-6454 or follow Julie on Twitter @Julie188.

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