November 23, 2006

As many had expected, comScore and NetRatings just released their Oct. 2006 numbers on Wednesday.

At the same time, Hitwise made their numbers public earlier this month. Overall, Google is still at the top, while Yahoo remains strong.

According to comScore, Microsoft is continuing to drop, while Ask surpasses AOL's market share.

In the box below are the actual numbers from all of them combined over the past year.

Let's make a compare-and-contrast table with the basic figures from each service. These show the estimated market share of the number of searches that happened in the U.S. in Oct. 2006.

For the most part, all the services put Google in the lead, Yahoo second and Microsoft's Windows Live third. Two of the services put Ask over AOL in the fourth place spot.

Google actually dropped in July, when people got worried about the company. Observers need not focus on month-to-month slight changes. Instead, Google actually recovered according to comScore, and we have every reason to believe it will continue. The overall decline observed in Yahoo since the month of July weren't enough to send up any alarm signals. They are within the usual ranges expected.

However, Microsoft continues on its steady drop in overall popularity and search share of the segment. It will be interesting to read the figures in the next few months, as Internet Explorer ver. 7 is more broadly deployed and could potentially boost Microsoft Live Search a notch or two.

In September, Ask.com actually overtook AOL for the fourth slot in the search engine share battle. This is considered significant. According to comScore, AOL is on track to plunge out of the 5 to 10 percent band it has occupied over the past twelve months. Ask is looking good at this point.

The actual traffic for Ask isn't just for Ask.com, but rather is for the combination of websites that Ask owns or controls, including properties like Excite, iWon, MyWay.com and My Web Search. As a network, Ask still controls a significant portion of the search segment.

Source: Search Engine Watch