Google Remains Top Search Dog

Google keeps it dominant search engine position, as the company that tracks figures announces a new method of measurement criteria.

According to figures released by research company comScore, Google retained its search engine dominance in July. Neitherthat, nor the fact that it has a 55.2% of all searches will surprise anyone.   It led Yahoo, which had a 23.5% share, Microsoft (12.3%), Ask.com (4.7%), and AOL, which scored 4.4%.   Google handled nearly 5.5billion search queries in July, while Yahoo fielded about 2.3 billion and Microsoft responded to about 1.2 billion, said comScore.  

The good news for Google is that its share of searches has risen over the last 12 months, up from 46.2 percent in July 2006. Yahoo, on the other hand, has seen a decline of 6% over the last year.

comScore is using a new method, called qSearch 2.0, to measure searches. Besides the big five US engines, it will include the top 50 sites worldwide where search activity is taking place. Additionally, it will factor in major "vertical" search sites, such as eBay, and partner search, where searchers use more than one search tab, including web, images and news, for a single search term, as well as local searches, such as maps.

“Previously, the search universe was defined as searches occurring at the major web search engines,” explained comScore. “With search becoming a more ubiquitous activity acrossthe web, comScore is expanding the market view of the search universe to encompass other searches that occur on the Internet.”