Not a Lot of Room to Swim

Search Marketing Blog

Not a Lot of Room to Swim

Posted by Sean McMahon on 08.25.2008

In a news release last week, Nielsen Online reported the latest market share percentages for the online search engine industry, which we have updated on our site. Not surprising, Google continues to dominate our vibrant industry both in terms of overall market share (60.2%) and year-over-year growth rate (+16%).

It is important to realize that, in addition to the fact that Google remains the biggest fish in the pond, there continues to be increased consolidation in the number of searches performed on the three largest search engines in the United States.

Here are several fascinating facts extracted from this report:

• The top three (3) search engines, Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft Live currently command almost ninety percent of the total number of online searches conducted in the U.S. (89.5% to be exact).

• The top five (5) search engines, Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft Live, AOL, and Ask, captured more than ninety-six percent (actually 96.1%) of the total number of U.S. searches performed during July 2008.

• While the overall search industry grew by three percent (3%) year-over-year last month, Google’s year-over-year growth was more than five (5) times this industry growth rate.

Needless to say, the big fish don’t leave a lot of room in the pond. Therefore, we at EngineWorks obviously concentrate most of our efforts on attracting qualified visitors and eager customers through these top performing engines.

As the saying goes, it makes sense to fish where the fish are!

Let us know if you envision any substantial changes to the market share percentages of these leading search engines during the coming 12 months.

One Response to “Not a Lot of Room to Swim”

Jeff Schneider 09.17.2009 at 12:13 pm

Hello All,

There can be no doubt that google is king. They are no different than any other dominant company in any other industry from the standpoint of dominance though. All companies eventually sucummb to competitors in the end.

One of the reasons Google has done so well is the fact that their ads are set up to look like informational links. This is something they figured out early in the game. Other forms of ads look like obvious sales traps. Consumers are more clever than the banner ads can appreciate.

Gratefully, Jeff