EngineWorks, Inc.

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.

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Today, DMNews reported that the current CEO at Ask.com, Jim Lanzone, will be stepping down, and be replaced immediately by Jim Safka, the current CEO of Primal Ventures, a new venture firm that identifies business opportunities for Ask.com’s parent company IAC Search and Media.

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As anticipated from an announcement earlier in the month, last week Microsoft launched its major update to Microsoft Live Search. The company is touting that its search engine is “faster and easier to use”. Not to be outdone, both Ask and Yahoo! announced significant improvements to there search engines as well.

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At the end of this post, I list the May 2007 market percentages of the largest players in the current online search industry. Once again, Google dramatically increased its lead in our space with an impressive 42.1% year-over-year growth rate in the month of April, to command more than 55% of the total search market.

What’s crazy to think about is, that when I entered our fledgling space back in the late 1990’s, Inktomi (purchased by Yahoo! in late 2002) was the T-Rex of the search engine landscape (with a combined market share of more than 42% at the time), and the now obscure Northern Light and AltaVista were nipping at its heals. Here is a snapshot of the other dinosaurs (and a one little furry creature) from August 1999:

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Interesting article today across the wire from The Associated Press titled “Microsoft,Yahoo become latest to improve Internet search privacy” proclaiming that the search engines are limiting the length of time that they retain potentially sensitive user data.  The article points-out that “the search engines all appear interested in staying a step ahead of regulators as the industry mines personal data to customize online ads tailored for the tastes and interests of each individual visitor.”

Search Engine Land reports that Ask.com is officially implementing support for XML sitemaps. The following is from Ask.com’s Webmaster Help section:

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This quote was stated today by Sheryl Sandberg, the vice president of global online sales and operations for Google, during a forum with Yahoo!, MSN, and Ask at Fortune’s iMeme tech conference in San Francisco.  As CNNMoney.com also reported today, the four giants of search didn’t always play nicely during this presentation.

Check out “Search Leaders Get Defensive” for a little insight into the competitiveness of our space at the very top.

Ask.com recently relaunched with new features and a redesigned user interface.  The innovative three-panel interface does an excellent job packing the search results page full of relevant results, content, tools and photos. It remains to be seen if the changes will increase Ask.com’s market share.