Google Still Growing Search Lead

New figures from comScore show Google still expanded its lead in the search market in January 2008, now accounting for 58.4 percent of Americans' online searches.

New search engine rankings from market research firm comScore show Google continued to expand its domination of the Internet search market in January 2008, accounting for 58.4 percent of all Americans’ online searches during the month. Google’s closest competitor was Yahoo, with a 22.9 percent share, followed by Microsoft sites (like Windows Live Search and MSN Search) in a distant third place with 9.8 percent of the market. AOL and Ask.com rounded out the top five, with 4.6 percent and 4.3 percent of the market, respectively.

According to comScore, Americans executed some 10.5 billion searches during the month of January, which is an 8.9 percent increase compared to December of 2007, and each of the top five search engines saw traffic increases of at least 5 percent during the month.

Research firm comScore has recently come under fire for the methodology it uses to collect market data: software installed on users’ (Windows) computers that tracks their online activity. The company says this “researchware” is only installed with a user’s informed consent, but industry watchers have noted several occasions where the software can be installed without a users’s explicit consent, or where permission to install the software is buried deep in a hard-to-read license agreement. The software is often bundles with games, screensavers, wallpapers, and other tempting free downloads.