comScore has released its analysis of the U.S. Internet search market for April, and the results are a little predictable. The 800-pound gorilla of the search engine marketplace, Google, continued to expand its share of the search market, accounting for 49.7 percent of all U.S. search queries during the month of April. Google’s share actually represents a 1.4 share point increase over March of 2007…and that increase essentially came at the expense of the other major search engines.
Yahoo’s network of sites easily held onto its second-place ranking in April, accounting for 26.8 percent of U.S. Internet searches for the month, although that represents a month-to-month decline of 0.7 share points. Microsoft’s recent efforts to revamp its online search features have yet to show substantial results: the Redmond-based company garnered 10.3 percent of U.S. search queries in April, but that’s down 0.6 share points from March. Ask.com basically held its own, declining only 0.1 share points to earn 5.1 percent of the U.S. search market for the month, while AOL/Time Warner was unchanged at 5 percent of the market.
According to comScore, Americans conducted 7.3 billion online searches during April 2007, which is an increase of 11 percent compared to April of 2006, but essentially unchanged from March of 2007. However, it’s good to evaluate numbers like these with a little skepticism: while the decimal points and seemingly-precise numbers may lend an air of credibility, conducting market studies on this scale is at best a challenging proposition, and market research firms—including comScore—are not without their critics.
