Nielsen//NetRatings recently reported that 1 in 3 Americans use search engines in their daily lives. This means that over 76% of the online population uses one of many available search engines in their day-to-day browsing.
A chart provided by Nielsen//NetRatings demonstrates the breakdown of the users and what the preferred search engines are.
Search DestinationsUnique Audience (000)Active Reach (%) Google59,32739.37 Yahoo! Search45,77430.38 MSN Search44,65129.63 AOL Search23,394 15.53 Ask Jeeves12,7928.49
Google, once again, leads the market with a 39% “share”, followed by Yahoo.com with a 30.3% cut.
The actual number of people that use search engines at the time of this press release is in excess of 110 million. Data like this continues to reinforce the thought that the search engine field has become the dominant industry on the web.
With searcher’s “smash and grab” approach to information gathering, it is imperative that search companies provide fresh and accurate search results. This is the main motivating force these companies use to constantly update algorithms and ranking procedures.
Over 50% of search engine users state that relevance of information is the main reason they use their engine of choice. These are some of the reasons that the battle for search engine supremacy will only intensify, with pretenders getting knocked out of the game all together.
Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for Murdok. Visit Murdok for the latest search news.
