Yahoo and Microsoft combined have an opportunity to be competitive in the search marketplace even though they trail considerably behind Google, according to a new analysis by comScore.
In June 2009, Google had 65 percent of the U.S. search market, compared to 28 percent for Yahoo and Microsoft combined. Despite lagging in terms of overall search share, the combined searcher penetration of Yahoo and Microsoft was 73.2 percent, not far behind Google at 84 percent.
The difference between search share and searcher penetration is that searchers on Google conduct significantly more searches on average in a month (54.5) than searchers on Yahoo and Microsoft (26.9).
“The recently announced search partnership between Microsoft and Yahoo! certainly makes the combined entity a more formidable competitor to Google in the U.S. search marketplace,” said Eli Goodman, comScore Search Evangelist. “While they are still looking up at Google in terms of market share, they have a real opportunity to make headway given that nearly three-quarters of all searchers conduct at least one search on these engines every month.
“The challenge will be to create a search experience compelling enough to convert lighter searchers into regular searchers which is generally easier than converting new users. Though clearly easier said than done, if they were to equalize the number of searches per searcher with Google they would command more than 40 percent market share.”
comScore also looked at search loyalty among users of the top three search engines to determine what challenges exist for the Yahoo-Microsoft partnership. Those who searched on Google had the highest loyalty rate, at 68.9 percent. Users of Yahoo and Microsoft conducted 32.6 percent of their searchers on the two sites combined.
“The challenge facing a Microsoft/Yahoo! combined search offering is that choice of search engines is often a subconscious decision on the part of the user,” said Gord Hotchkiss, President & CEO, Enquiro Search Solutions.
“For Microsoft/Yahoo! to disrupt the Google habit, they have to offer a compelling enough reason to do the cognitive heavy lifting required to break a subconscious habit. A significantly differentiated and superior search experience would be such a reason. The other option is to continue to interrupt consistently ‘upstream’, by integrating search tightly into their properties or applications so that people don’t have to go to the effort – minimal though it is – to go to Google to launch their search.”
