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January 31, 2007

According to various reports, Nielsen//NetRatings has published their search engine market share results for Dec. 2006. Overall, year-over-year gains reveal that Yahoo, while having just under fifty percent of the market share of Google, is apparently growing faster than Google is, at least for now.

As a whole, Nielsen//NetRatings' numbers show Google with 3.035 billion searches in December, up 22.6 percent for the same period in 2005, and Yahoo with 1.412 billion searches, up 30.1 percent from the year before.

This is kind of shocking, given that conventional wisdom is that Google is widely believed to be outpacing Yahoo at a much fast clip.

Top 10 Search Providers for December 2006, Ranked by Searches (U.S.)

You can clearly see that, although Google gained 560 million users in the last year (down from 1.06 billion the year before), and Yahoo gained 330 million (down from 370 million the year before), Yahoo gained a higher percentage over the previous year than Google did.

Google had roughly double the market share of Yahoo in 12/04, then 1.4 times the market share in 12/05, and is now back to double the market share in 12/06. In a sense, Yahoo has erased recent losses, getting itself at least back to where it was two years ago, while Google’s growth has slowed.

If things continue at this very specific pace, this is what the next few years will look like:

Now, these are awfully imprecise numbers, assuming that the trend of the last two years will continue exactly the same over the following eight years, but it does give you a better idea of how things have trended the last two years.

Don’t assume any of these numbers are precise in any way, but if Yahoo outpaces Google 30% to 22% every year, Yahoo can’t be counted out of the game any more. Things are tough at Yahoo, for sure, but there might be a few positive signs to look at.

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Source: Blog News Channel