Nielsen/NetRatings, Hitwise Report US Search Share for August

September 20, 2007

This article is included in these additional categories:

Analytics, Automated & MarTech | Paid Search | Search Engine Optimization

Hitwise and Nielsen/NetRatings issued their rankings of the top search providers for August, based on search volume, with the usual suspects at the very top of their respective lists – and the usual divergence in search-share proportions, as well as in the rankings below the top 3.

An estimated 4.2 billion search queries were conducted at Google Search, accounting for 54% of all search queries conducted in August, according to NetRatings.

Yahoo Search followed with less than 1.6 billion searches and a 20% share, in turn followed by MSN/Windows Live with 1.0 billion searches and 13% share of searches, NetRatings said.

Year-over-year growth among the top 3 ranged from 70% (MSN/Live Search) to 9% (Yahoo); Google’s YOY growth was 40%.

netratings-search-share-august.jpg

As usual, Hitwise’s search-share data varies from those of NetRatings and once again assigns Google a significantly higher share – 64% (for the four weeks ended September 1). In second and third position are Yahoo Search and MSN Search with 23% and 8%, respectively.

Nielsen/NetRatings and Hitwise disagree regarding which search provider is in fourth place: The former gives AOL Search a 5.6% share, whereas the latter assigns fourth place to Ask.com with 3.4% share. NetRatings ranks Ask fifth, with 1.7% share.

hitwise-search-share-august.jpg

The remaining 48 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.68% of US searches, Hitwise said.  NetRatings assigned a combined 2.6% to the search providers in the sixth through tenth positions in its rankings.

hitwise-search-engine-traffic-to-various-site-categories-august.jpg

Search engines remain the primary way internet users navigate to key industry categories, according to Hitwise, with the Travel, Entertainment, and Business and Finance categories received double-digit increases YOY in their share of traffic coming directly from search engines.

(Also see Compete.com’s version of August’s search rankings: “Microsoft’s Search Surge Stalls in August, Google’s Share at Two-Thirds.”)

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