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

Apr 14, 2008 at 1:53pm ET by Danny Sullivan

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:

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.

Danny Sullivan is editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land. He’s a widely cited authority on search engines and search marketing issues who has covered the space since 1996. Danny also oversees Search Engine Land’s SMX: Search Marketing Expo conference series, maintains a personal blog called Daggle and microblogs on Twitter as @dannysullivan.

See more articles by Danny Sullivan >

Share, Bookmark & Discuss This Article
More:

See more stories like this in the Members Library! Check out the Stats: Hitwise sections of the Members Library where this story is filed. Members also get access to exclusive video content, a members-only weekly & monthly newsletter, plus more. Check out all the benefits!

FREE DAILY SEARCH NEWS RECAP!

Stay on top of all the search news with our daily summary, the SearchCap newsletter. View a sample ›

STAY CURRENT THROUGHOUT THE DAY

The Search Engine Land feed keeps you informed as news happens. SEE ALL FEEDS »

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

FREE DAILY SEARCH NEWS RECAP!

STAY CURRENT THROUGHOUT THE DAY

Get Your Search Engine Land Premium Membership!

Get Your Search Engine Land
Premium Membership!