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Google gains big on Yahoo! and MSN Search |
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Friday, 10 February 2006 |
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 The number of online searches conducted in the U.S. topped 5 billion in December and the share of search by Google continues to grow according to research released this week by Nielsen//NetRatings.
The firm said that 5.1 billion online searches were conducted across approximately 60 search engines in the U.S. in December compared to 3.3 billion in December 2004 - a 55 percent year-over-year increase.
The big three search engines: Google, Yahoo! and MSN performed 81.1% of all searches in December 2005, up slightly from 78.8% in December 2004.
In absolute terms, all of the big three experienced double-digit growth year-over-year in December 2005, however in terms of market share Google was the big winner.
In terms of the raw number of searches performed, Google Search grew 75 percent to nearly 2.5 billion searches; Yahoo! Search rose 53 percent to nearly 1.1 billion searches, and MSN Search increased 20 percent to 553 million searches
In terms of market share, Google has pulled significantly away from its competitors. The market leader in online search posted a 48.8% share in December 2005 up from a 43.1% share in December 2004. Yahoo! place second with a 21.4% market share down from 21.7% the previous year while MSN dropped to 10.9% down from 14.0% the previous year.
Interestingly, despite the large increase in searches the firm found that the number of people connecting to the Internet in the U.S. rose just three percent to 207 million people. This meant that the average online American performed approximately 25 searches in December 2005 versus about 16 searches in December 2004.
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