Whatever happens in Google’s peripheral industry dabbling, the search giant lives up to its core reputation by grabbing 67.9 percent of US searches in April, a 4 percent increase year-over-year, according to Hitwise.
The usual rivals are present in the top four with a noticeable decline for third-place breath-holder MSN. Microsoft’s confusingly branded search engine dropped from 6.65 percent in March to 6.26 percent in April, down from 7.77 percent a year ago, and down significantly from search share once hovering around 12 percent.
Yahoo has shown little change over time, dropping from 20.29 percent in March to 20.28 percent in April. Ask.com showed an increase in usage, gaining from 4.09 percent to 4.17 percent. The remaining 45 search engines Hitwise measured accounted for only 1.4 percent combined.
Search is a primary driver of traffic in many sectors, from health and medical to travel, shopping, news, and social networking. Google’s growth in traffic-driving either outpaces or matches the search industry as a whole. The health sector, for example, receives 46 percent of its traffic from search, and Google sends over 30 percent of the whole. Likewise in the travel sector, which generates nearly 34 percent of its traffic from search; 23 percent comes from Google.
The same general phenomenon is happening in France, where once the government sought to build its own Franco-centric search engine. Google leads other American search engines there, controlling nearly 90 percent of the market, according to XitiMonitor. The top three are virtually the same except for share percentage, with Yahoo and Live search neck and neck at 3 percent and 2.6 percent respectively, while the sole French search engine on the list, Orange, declines to 1.5 percent.
