Google dominates market

Search engine Google continues to dominate the market share for the ninth consecutive month, according to a report released by Internet metrics company comScore Networks.

There is little Yahoo and Microsoft can do about Google's dominance in the global search market. The Mountain View company is on a roll and is gaining substantial market share every quarter, according to the study published Monday.

With its sites fielding 43.1 per cent of all US searches in April, Google showed a 6.6 per cent gain since April 2005. Yahoo maintained its search market share at 28.8 per cent during the same period. Since April 2005, it has seen its search share decline 2.7 per cent.

MSN experienced a 0.3 per cent decline since March and a 3.2 per cent decline since April 2005.

Americans made 6.6 billion online searches in April, 4 per cent more than in March. Google sites processed 2.9 billion search queries, followed by 1.9 billion at Yahoo Sites, 858 million at MSN-Microsoft, 457 million at Time Warner Network, and 384 million at Ask Jeeves/Ask Network.

Other reports recently released suggest that Comscore's numbers may be conservative. Nielsen Netratings estimated last month that Google controls 49 per cent, while Yahoo was put into a 22 per cent and MSN into an 11 per cent range.

Another study released today by Hitwise is closer to Nielsen's figures, claiming that Google's share is at 47.4 per cent, Yahoo at 16.0 per cent and MSN at 11.5 per cent.

For example, Yahoo's mail has 42.4 per cent of the traffic, followed by MSN with 22.9 per cent- Gmail comes in at a meagrer 2.54 per cent.

Yahoo finance is also much more successful than the recently launched Google Finance site- with a share of 34.9 per cent compared to 0.29 per cent.

In news, Google's share is estimated at 1.9 per cent, while Yahoo attracts 6.3 per cent of all traffic.

First Published: May 23, 2006 15:22 IST