Hitwise: Google Hits New High; Microsoft & Yahoo New Lows

Last week, Hitwise released the latest statistics for search engine share in the United States for March 2008, showing Google at an all-time high while Microsoft and Yahoo hit all-time lows. The four major search engines stack up as follows: Google: 67.3% Yahoo: 20.3% Microsoft: 6.7% Ask: 4.1% The trend over time? Here’s the past […]

Chat with SearchBot


Hitwise: March 2008 Search Share

Last week, Hitwise
released the latest statistics for search engine share in
the United States for March 2008, showing Google at an all-time high while
Microsoft and Yahoo hit all-time lows.

The four major search engines stack up as follows:

  • Google: 67.3%
  • Yahoo: 20.3%
  • Microsoft: 6.7%
  • Ask: 4.1%

The trend over time? Here’s the past year’s worth of data:


Hitwise: March 2007-2008 Search Share

Google’s previous high (according to stats I have going back to August 2006)
was in April 2007, with a 65.3 percent share. Microsoft and Yahoo, in contrast,
hit all time lows for the same period.

Caveat Time!

As a reminder, my general rules when evaluating popularity stats:

  • Avoid drawing conclusions based on month-to-month comparisons. Lots
    of things can cause one month’s figures to be incomparable to another month.
    It’s better to see the trend across multiple months in a row.
     
  • Avoid drawing conclusions based on one ratings service’s figures.
    Each service has a unique methodology used to create popularity estimates.
    This means that ratings will rarely be the same between services. However, a
    trend that you see reflected across two or more services may give you faith in
    trusting that trend.
     
  • Consider Actual Number Of Searches: While share for a particular
    search engine might drop, the raw number of searches might still be going up
    (and thus they might be earning more money, despite a share drop). This is
    because the "pie" of searches keeps growing, so even a smaller slice of the
    pie might be more than a bigger slice in the past. See
    Nielsen NetRatings:
    August 2007 Search Share Puts Google On Top, Microsoft Holding Gains
    for a
    further explanation of this.

Also specifically for Hitwise, you don’t see AOL on the chart because Hitwise
doesn’t break it out. Instead, it is included in the "Other" figure. Hitwise
generally undercounts AOL’s share; other services put it at 4 percent or
higher.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Danny Sullivan
Contributor
Danny Sullivan was a journalist and analyst who covered the digital and search marketing space from 1996 through 2017. He was also a cofounder of Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land and MarTech, and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo and MarTech events. He retired from journalism and Third Door Media in June 2017. You can learn more about him on his personal site & blog He can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

Get the must-read newsletter for search marketers.