…and Google Extends Its Search Lead

Comscore has released search engine rankings for July 2008, and guess what? Google extended its lead to almost 62 percent of all U.S. Internet searches.

Media metrics outfit comScore has released its search engine rankings for July 2008—and, would you believe it? Google has extended its lead in the U.S. search marketplace again, now accounting for 61.9 percent of all searches. The new figures represent a 0.4 percent increase for the company over June 2008. Also showing month-to-month gains were Ask.com and AOL sites, seeing a 0.2 percent and 0.1 percent increase in their search traffic, respectively. According to comScore, Ask.com now accounts for 4.5 percent of search traffic, while AOL captures 4.2 percent of the market.

Those month-to-month increased can only mean one thing for competitors Yahoo and Microsoft: both saw their search traffic decline during July 2008, by 0.4 and 0.3 percent, respectively. Yahoo now controls 20.5 percent of the U.S. search market, while Microsoft’s search efforts (including MSN search and Live Search account for 8.9 percent of the market.

The search figures include search queries brought in by channel partners and partner sites, but do not include mapping, directory, and video searches generated outside the sites’s main search engines.

Overall, comScore estimates Americans conducted 11.8 billion Internet searches during July 2008, which represents a 2 percent increase over June 2008.