Google Continues To Gain Search Share

location based services

For the ninth consecutive month, Google in April saw its share of U.S. searches rise. Meanwhile, Yahoo maintained its share, and MSN experienced a slight decline.

By Thomas Claburn
InformationWeek

May 22, 2006 10:00 AM

For the ninth consecutive month, Google in April saw its share of U.S. searches rise, according to a report released today by Internet metrics company comScore Networks.

With its sites fielding 43.1% of all U.S. searches in April, Google showed a 6.6% gain since April 2005.

Yahoo maintained its search market share at 28.8% during the same period. Since April 2005, it has seen its search share decline 2.7%.

MSN experienced a 0.3% decline since March and a 3.2% decline since April 2005.

Americans made 6.6 billion online searches in April, 4% more than in March.

Google Sites processed 2.9 billion search queries, followed by 1.9 billion at Yahoo Sites, 858 million at MSN-Microsoft, 457 million at Time Warner Network, and 384 million at Ask Jeeves/Ask Network.

A new player has gained sixth place: social networking site MySpace, which processed 43 million search queries. Though that only represents 0.6% of the U.S. search market, the site's rapidly growing user base, supposedly close to 80 million, ensures that it will be a significant player in the search market in the months to come.