Google’s share of search queries has grown to 47 percent over the last three years. But, the no-frills homepage isn’t pulling searchers away from Yahoo!, whose busy portal page has held runner-up status over the same time period, but rather from the chronically third-place MSN. If a search party has left the Redmond campus querying for their lost searchers, they can save the tread on their Vans. They’ve gone to Google.
A summary of Forrester Research’s “Search loyalty is hard to find” provided by InternetRetailer reveals that the big four search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL) have lost overall online search market share, dropping from 88 percent in 2003 to 83 percent in 2004.
But neither Google nor Yahoo! felt that drop. Google saw an increase, Yahoo! stayed the same, and MSN shrank to hold just over 11 percent in October of 2005, down from 17% just two years earlier.
That same Forrester report said only 40 percent of searchers were loyal to only one of the big four, though. Forty-nine percent said they used multiple engines.
Along with Google’s mantra of indexing the world’s information, the report (and no doubt many others) probably spurred Google’s interest in video and music search.
Respondents to the Forrester survey said these were the main areas Google was lacking, and the primary reason they used competitors like Yahoo! or MSN. AOL was rated least effective in four of 11 search tasks.
These trends may change in Google’s favor however as the company broadens its relationship with AOL, taking advantage of their portal status as well as access to Warner Brothers and Turner Broadcasting content. Moves such as the one with AOL will help further solidify Google’s place in the market.
