MSN Search must be very worried with a a significant drop in its market share of the search engine space. While MSN/Windows Live Search comes in at third place in a ielsen//Netratings search share rankings report released for September 2006, they show a a 12 percent decline in their market share with 9.2 percent (519 million) of the search space. comScore Networks reported that MSN Search was at 15.8 percent in August 2005. Google's year-over-year growth was 24 percent. With over 2.8 billion searches conducted through Google, which Nielsen record as 50 percent market share. Yahoo! showed 12 percent growth over the past year, providing 1.3 billion searches, 23.4 percent. AOL's year-over-year growth declined by 8.7 percent, garnering 358 million searches, or 6.3 percent of them. MSN's search market share has been slipping compared to its main rival, Google. comScore Networks reported that MSN Search garnered a 12.5 percent share of search engine traffic last month, down from 15.8 percent in August 2005. Google retains the largest market share, with 44.1 percent of the traffic last month--up from 37.3 percent in August of last year.
Top 10 Search Providers for September 2006,
| Provider | Searches (000) | YOY Growth | Share of Searches | |
|
1
|
Google Search | 2,826,016 | 24% | 50.00% |
|
2
|
Yahoo! Search | 1,320,962 | 12% | 23.40% |
|
3
|
MSN/Windows Live Search | 519,259 | -12% | 9.20% |
|
4
|
AOL Search | 358,472 | -8.70% | 6.30% |
|
5
|
Ask.com Search | 152,147 | 19% | 2.70% |
|
6
|
My Way Search | 123,605 | 16% | 2.20% |
|
7
|
EarthLink Search | 32,265 | -2% | 0.60% |
|
8
|
BellSouth Search | 27,437 | N/A | 0.50% |
|
9
|
iWon Search | 27,111 | -26% | 0.50% |
|
10
|
Dogpile.com Search | 21,759 | -34% | 0.40% |
Source: Nielsen//NetRatings MegaView Search, October 2006 Example: An estimated 2.8 billion search queries were conducted at Google Search, representing 50 percent of all search queries conducted during the given time period.
