May 23, 2006

According to a new report released yesterday by Comscore, Google continues to gain market share against all its main competitors.

Overall, this marks the 9th consecutive month that Google has steadily boosted its rather large share of the search market.

Comscore said that Google's market share has increased to 43 percent in April, up from 42.6 percent in March, while its competitor Yahoo remained steady at 27.9 percent.

MSN actually fell from 13.1 percent to 12.8 percent during the same period.

The year-over-year picture is just as good for Google. Its overall search share is up 6.7 percent from April of last year to April of this year, while Yahoo fell 2.62 percent over the same period, and MSN fell 3.2 percent.

According to search analyst Gary Stein, Google's steady gains of its market share reveals that although the search battle between Yahoo, MSN and Google is a key topic of discussion in the media, Yahoo and MSN are having trouble measuring up to the hype--so much so that Yahoo may be positioning itself away from the search space.

"It's more than just a trend--it's getting away from them," he said. "It's probably pretty clear in Terry Semel's (Yahoo's CEO) mind--that's why he talks about social media every chance he gets."

While Yahoo may be positioning itself more as a portal, Microsoft doesn't necessarily have that luxury, Stein said, as it has been explicitly positioning itself as a competitor.

"I think Microsoft is absolutely pushing itself as a direct competitor to Google, and when they talk about search, I think they want it to be a zero-sum game," he said. "They want to see points taken away from Google and put into Microsoft, and that just isn't happening."

Source: Online Media Daily