The US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) issued warning letters issued in late March, 2009 to a number of big pharmaceutical companies, saying that their search ads were misleading and didn’t contain the required disclosure information mandated by US federal regulations. As one might have expected this caused the companies to temporarily pull their SEM campaigns and resulted in a “59% drop in sponsored link exposures,” according to comScore:

An analysis of exposure to branded URLs within comScore’s data revealed that substantial declines occurred immediately following the letters being sent on March 26. Sponsored link exposures dropped 59 percent from 10.5 million during the week ending March 29 to 4.3 million during the week ending April 5. Declines in sponsored link exposures not only occurred in the weeks immediately following the letters, but continued over the next several months, plummeting 84 percent overall from March to June.

This basically means that they suspended their search ads while they tried to figure out how to comply with the FDA’s rules. Annually the pharmaceutical industry represents almost a billion dollars in online ad spending in the US. Here are the IAB’s numbers for 2008:

ComScore also said that organic sites promoting pharma products were also re-evaluated by the companies and experienced a traffic decline for a period of time:

Vanity and unbranded link exposures also experienced a decline, on average, across brands during the same period, although these methods were not under scrutiny in the FDA letters. Unbranded sites, which give additional information on the condition and treatment but do not directly promote the brand drug, declined 35-percent March to June to slightly more than one million exposures. Vanity URLs, which make no mention of a specific brand while generically describing a health condition but then redirect to the brand or drug’s website, declined 11 percent in June to 3.2 million average exposures versus March.

One of the challenges for the pharma industry in doing SEM for specific drugs is writing ad copy that is legally compliant, with a very limited amount of space in which to operate. It’s kind of absurd in a way. It thus may be that the industry will have to target conditions or ailments in paid-search ads and not mention specific drugs at all.

Yesterday comScore reported search numbers for August. What they show is growth in overall search volume, including at Google sites (except YouTube). Google has 2.5 times the search volume as Yahoo and Microsoft combined. But Microsoft’s Bing also grew its share of the overall US search market from 8.9 percent in July to 9.3 percent in August. Here are the charts:

In the “expanded view” of search, what stands out are the following:

• Search volume declines at eBay, AOL and MySpace
• Growth at Bing/Microsoft and dramatic growth at Facebook (20 percent vs. July)

All the typical qualifications and caveats apply, but it appears that Bing does have positive momentum. (I recall my 69 year old mother without my prompting extolling the virtues of Bing vs. Google to me a couple of months ago.)

Fear not, Danny will do his customary roundup of all the numbers at a later time.

A report analyzing traffic and click-through rates from ad network Chikita finds that “Bing users are over 50% more likely to click an ad on your site than Google users.” What this means, according to the post, is those who arrive at third party sites via Bing click more frequently on ads on those sites than those coming through Google. TechCrunch offers a bit more detail and speculation about why this might be (i.e., “the law of large numbers”). According to Chikita, the respective click rates are:

• Google: .97 percent
• Yahoo: 1.24 percent
• Bing: 1.5 percent

Bing appears has made some incremental gains in search market share since its launch at the end of May. The two most recent roundups of the numbers are here and here. Even though Bing has been well received and has some momentum it doesn’t appear that will quickly translate into significant market share advances. For that reason Microsoft still needs Yahoo’s reach.

Turning to the seemingly perpetual subject of a search deal between Microsoft and Yahoo, AdAge is reporting that a deal, previously described as “imminent,” could be announced this week. The article says the payment structure was a sticking point and will be a revenue share rather than an upfront payment and revenue guarantees, which Yahoo had reportedly wanted:

Execs in Redmond never conceived of the deal as an upfront purchase of Yahoo’s search traffic but as a deal in which Yahoo would be compensated from a share of revenue from the sale of search ads. Yahoo would be allowed to sell search ads on Bing.com as well as its own site, giving it more search inventory to sell and making it a bigger player in the search sales front. It would also immediately be able to save millions by not having to maintain its own search infrastructure.

The latest terms of the deal underscore Microsoft’s devotion to developing and owning technology vs. selling media. The deal won’t make it a bigger seller of online advertising but it would allow it to eliminate a search-technology competitor in Yahoo and consolidate roughly 30% of the search marketplace on its own platform — a large enough share, CEO Steve Ballmer seems to believe, to dent Google’s dominance.

If the article is correct then Yahoo would retain the ability to sell search and display to its advertisers, but probably not through an integrated platform. Currently Yahoo sells search via Panama and display advertising through APT; however there was always discussion of integrating the platforms in the near term.

We’ll have to wait to see whether there’s a deal and what the terms are. Any such deal would have to pass muster with regulators before it could be implemented.

On that front, the NY Times ran an article this weekend describing internal conflict within the Obama administration about how aggressive to get with anti-trust policy and prosecutions. The US Department of Justice anti-trust chief Christine Varney, who has described Google previously as “a monopoly,” is apparently facing push-back in her quest to reign in some US corporations. How this internal debate plays out will affect scrutiny of potential deals such as Yahoo-Microsoft.

Now a third major ratings service has released search engine share figures for June 2009, and like the others, they show that Bing made only a tiny gain in the wake of its launch and major ad campaign.

The comScore figures have gone out to the financial analyst community, and the comScore press release with them usually arrives a week after that. But Mark Mahaney at Citigroup gave permission to cite figures in his report, which includes analysis for investors (too early to call, Bing has a “solid product” but faces “large uphill battle”).

For June 2009, here’s the search share handled by each of the major players in the United States:

• Google: 65.0%, unchanged from May 2009
• Yahoo: 19.6%, down from 20.1%, a 0.5% drop
• Bing: 8.4%, up from 8.0%, a 0.4% rise
• Ask: 3.9%, unchanged from May 2009
• AOL: 3.1%, unchanged from May 209

In terms of search volume, actual number of searches handled:

• Google: 9.135 billion, down from 9.307 billion, a 172 million search drop
• Yahoo: 2.755 billion, down from 2.877 billion, a 122 million search drop
• Bing: 1.179 billion, up from 1.149 billion, a 30 million rise
• Ask: 552 million, down from 555 million, a 3 million drop
• AOL: 439 million, down form 438 million, a 1 million drop

The volume figures are important. With Bing showing a 0.4% rise in share, while Yahoo shows a 0.5% drop, it’s easy to assume that Bing “stole” share from Yahoo. However, what happens each month is that the overall “pie” of searches gets larger or smaller in general. In the summer, the pie often shrinks as people are out of school and not searching as much.

So Yahoo’s drop? The 122 million searches that it lost didn’t all flow into Bing, which shows a 30 million rise. Of course, normally you’d also have expected Bing to also have shown a summer drop. That’s also important to consider, in fully measuring the gain. For example, if it had normally fallen by 50 million searches, then to show a 30 million rise would mean in reality an 80 million overall gain.

Aren’t interpreting stats fun? Suffice to say, Bing did well to be up, but it’s uncertain who they pulled away from (especially since the Bing marketing and publicity might have generated “new” searches that wouldn’t normally have existed), and we remain very much in watch and see mode.

For those keeping score at home, here’s how it looks with the other rating services, on a share and gain basis, with June 2009 cited first, then May 2009 and the change:

• comScore: 8.4%, up from 8.0%, a 0.4% rise
• Compete: 6.2%, up from 6.5%, a tiny 0.3% gain
• Hitwise: 5.25%, down from 5.64, a .039% drop

On a weekly basis, Hitwise found a rise from the beginning of the month in June to the end of the month. More on that in the related stories below:

• Bing: comScore sees Gains; Compete Sees Same Old, Same Old (early June 2009 figures)
• Hitwise: Bing Both Grows & Drops In June; Google Still Tops (full June 2009 figures)
• At One Month, Bing Says Unique Users Up; Compete Says Barely Any Gain In Searches (full June 2009 figures)
• Report: Search Ad Spending Stabilizes While Bing Gains On Google, Yahoo
• Report: Google Has Nothing To Fear From Bing Itself (interesting consumer behavior survey from JP Morgan)

For those who want an early peak into July, here’s the past five days of share data from Compete:

Bing figures don’t include searches at Club Bing, which add about another 1.5% or so share, roughly. Bing started June in the 5.5% to 6.0% range, so it’s picked up about 1% share according to Compete, since June.

As I keep saying, while there’s a temptation to draw conclusions from the early figures, we really want to see what happens around October and November. People will be back from school then, the months will be more “regular” in nature and the Bing marketing campaign will likely have ended or ramped down. Will word-of-mouth have spread by then? Will behaviors have changed?

A second major ratings service, Compete, has now released search engine share figures for June 2009 showing Microsoft’s new Bing service making a tiny gain. That, following Hitwise’s mixed stats from last week, keeps Bing in “it’s too early to say” territory. Meanwhile, Bing itself says at one month old, unique users up 8%.

Here are the figures showing share of searches each search engine handled in the United States, for June 2009 from Compete:

Normally, I’m loathe to do month-to-month comparisons, because they can be so easily skewed by many factors and not be indicative of a trend. But given Bing’s massive launch, it makes sense to look closely at the May to June 2009 change.

Bing was up — barely — from 6.2% to 6.5%, a tiny 0.3% gain. Did that hurt Google? Nope. Google rose from 73.3% to 73.9%, a 0.6% gain. Down were Yahoo and Ask, both losing 0.4% in share. AOL was unchanged (and barely registers at 0.8%).

So Bing hurt Yahoo and Ask? Hard to say. There’s often a seasonal downturn in summer, when students are out of school, so searching declines.

In terms of search volume — the actual number of searches performed — EVERYONE but Bing was down. That suggests the new marketing helped drive additional queries rather than necessarily pulled from the other players.

Google dropped from 9.145 billion searches in May to 9.065 billion searches in June, an 80 million searches drop. Yahoo lost about the same, 83 million searches. Ask lost 55 million and AOL lost 5 million. That’s 223 million searches lost. Did Bing get them all? No. Bing was up only 1 million searches.

What happened is the overall search “pie” of searches got smaller. Bing’s marketing helped it keep a larger slice of pie than likely would have happened, but the decline of the others isn’t because it “stole” from them.

And how’s Google up on a percentage basis when it’s also lost 80 million searches? That’s because on a percentage basis, Google actually got a bigger slice of the smaller pie compared to May 2009.

If searches from Bing’s “Club Bing” gaming service are included, the service does much better, gaining nearly 1% in share (0.9%). But Google also gains even more share, 1.4%. That’s because in May 2009, when Club Bing (then Club Live) figures were counted, that gave it less of a slice compared to June:

In terms of ads, Bing has more to trumpet. The percentage of “sponsored referrals,” that is the percentage of people clicking on ads compared to free results, nearly doubled from 3.1% in May to 5.6% in June, a 2.5% gain:

That comes along with news from Efficient Frontier’s research that Bing has gained click share along with advertiser spend share (see Report: Search Ad Spending Stabilizes While Bing Gains On Google, Yahoo).

Of course, both Ask and AOL saw similar gains. Ask gained 2.2% month-to-month in sponsored clicks and AOL got a 1.9% gain. Neither had major redesigns or marketing pushes.

Where’s this leave us? Hitwise: Bing Both Grows & Drops In June; Google Still Tops covers how stats last week from Hitwise were hardly conclusive. On a monthly basis, Bing lost share. On a week-by-week basis, it gained over 2% from the beginning of the month to the end.

So, it remains watch-and-see. NetRatings and comScore will be out later this month with their own figures for June. Still, we really want to see what happens around October and November, when people are back from school and the marketing barrage has ended or ramped down. How has the service done then? Bing: comScore sees Gains; Compete Sees Same Old, Same Old has more perspective about that.

Meanwhile, over at the Bing blog, Microsoft has posted some stats of its own in Bing At Month One:

• Bing said it saw an 8 percent growth in unique users (note this is users, not actual searches, if you’re trying to compare to Compete or other figures)
• Bing said its estimate of “people likely to recommend” visitors to Bing doubled
• Shopping’s said to have had a 3 times increase in visits and 5.42% increase in Cashback transactions
• Travel’s said to have had a 90% increase in traffic

Just in from Hitwise, the first month-to-month figures since the launch of Bing. And the figures show Bing has both gained and dropped in the same month. Confusing? Yes it is!

Here are the month-to-month figures, percentage of searches each search engine handled in the United States:

You can see that from May to June, Google’s up to 74.04%. Yahoo’s up, to 16.19%. And Bing? Down! It dropped from 5.64% in May to 5.25% in June.

Despite this, Hitwise put out its emailed release saying “Bing Growing at 25 Percent Rate in June 2009.” How’s that work? Let’s go to the second chart, week-by-week growth in May:

Here you can see that in the beginning of the month, Bing had a 4.3% share. By the end, it had risen to 6.71% share. Over the month, Hitwise says this is a 25% gain.

The question is, will Bing maintain that type of share through an entire month? We’ll know when July figures come out. The bigger question is whether Bing will maintain that type of share when Microsoft’s ad spending ramps down.

Meanwhile, over at Mashable, there’s been plenty of buzz over the fact that Bing is “now” bigger than Digg, Twitter or CNN. That lacks the proper perspective. Look at this chart:

That shows Live.com having more traffic than two of those players (and yes, it also has more than CNN, too). Live.com was Bing. IE, “Bing” has always been bigger than those other players, it seems.

For some more prespective on the early numbers, see my past post, Bing: comScore sees Gains; Compete Sees Same Old, Same Old

More early stats are coming in on how searchers are reacting to the Bing launch. comScore shows Microsoft’s Bing search engine continuing to make gains, but Compete shows things remain largely the same.

From comScore, the latest stats show that “searcher penetration” has climbed from 13.7% in the week before it launched, to 15.8% during the launch week to 16.7% for the week after launch. The share of search results pages have risen from 9.1% to 12.1% over the same period. From the comScore press release:

Searcher Penetration & Share Of Search Results Pages shouldn’t be confused with the standard “search share” figures that comScore or other ratings services typically release. As I wrote earlier when these figures first came out:

I’ve talked with comScore a bit more about the figures. They’re not providing an early look at the usual “share of searches” figure that’s released on a monthly basis, as this is something they want clients to have a first look at.

The “Share Of Search Results Pages” figure above runs closely akin to that, they say – so Microsoft’s Bing might have picked up 2% share of the searches “pie.” However, keep in mind that if the pie itself gets larger because of new searches, other players can lose share even if the overall raw number of searches increases.

To me, the more interesting figure is the “Searcher Penetration,” which shows of everyone searching on the web, what percentage at some point made it to a particular search engine on a daily basis. Microsoft managed to get 15.5% of searchers over to check it out, up from 13.8% the week before – a 1.7% gain. comScore tells me that Google and Yahoo also had penetration gains, but that Microsoft’s gain was on the order of double of the others.

And how could everyone gain? Penetration for any particular search engine can be up to 100%, as people use more than one search engine. So (purely for example) Google could have a 80% penetration, Yahoo 60% and Microsoft 30% — which would show most people use Google, but plenty also use Yahoo and some use also Microsoft.

Meanwhile, Compete has also sent me stats. Below, “Search Engine Users Share,” the percentage of all searchers in the United States who went to one or more of the services below (since they could go to more than one, the overall percentages add to more than 100%):

The bold line marks the Bing launch, and you can see Microsoft immediately gains 3% — but this doesn’t come at the expense of the other search engines. People were checking out Bing in addition to visiting their regular services. Since the launch, Bing’s had a high of 12.1% share (also in bold) but mainly hovers at the 11% mark.

Unlike comScore, Compete has release standard share of searches figures. These are below. The show what percentage of searches are handled by each of the major search engines. While people may search at more than one search engine, the overall “pie” of searches that happen on a given day is finite — so the percentages do not add up to more than 100%. Bold marks the launch day for Bing (figures before that reflect searches at MSN and Windows Live):

As you can see, Compete’s figures show that the launch has created no gain in search share. Compete has some additional charts through June 8 here.

Over at Hitwise, there aren’t share figures in terms of search, but you can see how Bing is now among the top 20 most popular web sites in the US and is considered the 4th most popular search engine. Of course, I think Live Search (which Bing replaced) was also among the most popular sites — and I’m pretty sure it was the 3rd most popular search engine. So the changes don’t mean that much when you know the context. And does that mean Bing is less popular than Live Search? Almost certainly not. I suspect there’s still a lot of data consolidation that has yet to happen with the Hitwise figures.

Meanwhile, Efficient Frontier — which handles paid search campaigns for many large companies — found a 19.8% lift in impressions for Bing. That’s not a 19.8% share. That’s the difference between the percentage who visited Bing before the launch compared to afterward. What the actual impression share was isn’t given.

These figures are all prelminary, and while we’re all anxious to know how things are going, it’s going to take months to really assess the situation.

The first true benchmark will be the more standard figures for June and especially the months after that. A rise in June wouldn’t be surprising, given the amount of marketing that’s going on. But when the marketing levels off or decreases in the following months, will it have done the job to keep searchers.

But before we get June, May figures are coming in. From Nielsen (PDF), the share of searches handled in the US by the major three players:

• Google: 63.2%
• Yahoo: 17.2%
• Microsoft: 9.4%

As for comScore, financial analysts get stats before the general press, and sometimes those leak out. For May, Business Insider has figures from comScore that JP Morgan’s Imran Khan put out:

• Google: 65.0%
• Yahoo: 20.1%
• Microsoft: 8.0%

For a long term view of search share, see my Search Market Share 2008: Google Grew, Yahoo & Microsoft Dropped & Stabilized post. Also see related discussion on Techmeme.

We saw the same headline, based on data issued by StatCounter from Thursday. These data reportedly show that yesterday the share of searches went like this:

• Google: 71.47 percent
• Bing: 16.28 percent
• Yahoo: 10.22 percent

On a global basis the company said it saw a similar trend:

• Google: 87.62 percent
• Bing: 5.62 percent
• Yahoo: 5.13 percent

To get a reality check on these numbers and discover whether Bing had in fact surpassed Yahoo we reached out to Hitwise, Nielsen, comScore and Compete. We’re still waiting to get data or updates from these sources. But the charts and tables below reflect what we got quickly from Hitwise and Nielsen. I also include some public Compete data at the end.

Hitwise shows Yahoo still more than double Bing’s volume, but says that Bing’s visits “are up more than 14,500% since launch.”

Nielsen shows a jump in Bing visits on June 1 but a decline thereafter. But look how the volume doubled in terms of audience (vs. Live Search) and how page views essentially tripled.

The blue numbers are based on small samples and are less reliable.

Now here are the Compete public data comparing Google, Yahoo search (not Yahoo.com) and Bing (where the sample is too small to be helpful).

What these data collectively show — and we’ll update if/when we get more — is that Bing has received a potentially significant traffic bump compared to Live Search/MSN since launch and rollout of the marketing campaign on TV and online. However Bing has (so far) not surpassed Yahoo for the number two spot.

Update: Below is a more complete chart from Hitwise showing daily visits, with Live and MSN broken out. The chart appears to reflect that Bing has taken over for MSN and Live Search but that it has not gained any significant share according to Hitwise:

Compete.com says we spent a lot of time searching for information about entertainers, TV, and taxes during January. The terms “rihanna” and “chris brown” are Nos. 1 and 3 according to their data, with “irs.gov,” “hulu,” and “american idol” rounding out the top five.

On the flip side of the coin, “circuit city” and “peanut butter recall” were the two biggest decliners in search activity. You can see the full versions of both charts on the Compete.com blog.

With 2008 behind us, I wanted to look back and plot how search engine market share changed over the year in the United States. No surprises here. Pick your numbers, Google grew and grew. Yahoo and Microsoft dropped by lately have leveled off.

Before we do the pretty pictures, I’ll repeat my standing philosophy about search market share figures:

• 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.

Google: Share Of Searches, 2008

Now for the charts. I’ll start with the share of all searches in the United States estimated to have been processed by Google in a given month. Why four lines? There are four major ratings services out there: comScore (CS), Nielsen (NR), Compete (CP) and Hitwise (HW). Each gathers data in different ways, and what each considers to be a “search” varies as well.

I plot them against each other in order to see how they agree on overall trends. For example, it matters less to me that comScore thought Google started 2008 with a roughly 58% share while Hitwise estimated a 66% share. What’s important is that both services agreed that Google’s share overall grew:

What’s most interesting are places where the trends diverge. If you see two lines cross or move widely apart from each other, then the services are radically disagreeing about what happened in a particular month.

Nielsen is the main exception here. Twice, in April 2008 and November 2008, it showed Google popping well above previous months. Why? I have no idea. I’ll try to look into it more in the future.

Bottom line? Google grew from a 57%-to-66% estimated share in January 2008 to a 63%-to-72% share by the end of the year. In short, a 6% gain.

Prediction? Expect continued incremental single-digit share growth.

Note that this prediction, as are the others below, isn’t based on a huge deal of analysis. I’m simply looking at the lines for 2008, plus reflecting on how I’ve seen search market share growth go over the past few years, and estimating that outward. Many factors potentially could radically change growth, such as further economic decline, the launch of new search products or the potential purchase of Yahoo by Microsoft. But my gut tells me that we won’t see any radical upheavals (we’ve typically not, over the years).

Yahoo: Share Of Searches, 2008

The first part of 2008 saw Yahoo losing share. I’d then argue that the situation leveled off toward the last quarter. That’s clearly reflected in the Hitwise and Compete figures from October onward. comScore shows an actual rise. Nielsen  is mixed — it showed a Yahoo rise in the middle of the year when all the other ratings services were showing a decline.

Bottom line? Yahoo dropped from a 19%-to-23% estimated share in January 2008 to a 17%-to-21% share by the end of the year. In short, a 2% loss.

Prediction? Assuming no Microsoft purchase, I’d expect share to stay flat or perhaps show another 2-3% of decline by the end of 2009.

Microsoft: Share Of Searches, 2008

Similar to Yahoo, Microsoft saw a year of losing share early on and then stabilizing. Unlike Yahoo, some of that stability might be in question due the debate on whether to count Club Live searches. These are searches through giveaway, contest and other incentive programs Microsoft that runs. Microsoft hopes that over time, those searching for prizes and to solve puzzles will turn to it’s Live Search search engine to do “regular” searches.

Who counts Club Live searches? I know Nielsen does, and I believe comScore does (I’ll check and update). Hitwise does not. Compete splits the difference and reports share figure with and without Club Live.

Is it a big difference? You can compare at Compete how it looks with and without Club Live. Adding Club Live gives Microsoft about a 3% share bump.

In my charts, I’ve included the Club Live figures since both the long-standing services of Nielsen and comScore are already using them. Plus, even with the 3% bump this may give Microsoft, it’s still pretty far down in share.

Bottom line? Microsoft dropped from a 7%-to-12% share estimated share in January 2008 to a 6%-to-10% share by the end of the year. In short, a 1%-to-2% loss. Drop Club Live searches, and the loss would likely be greater.

Prediction? I’d expect share to stay flat or perhaps show another 1%-to-2% of decline by the end of 2009. There’s a slight chance in my view that distribution deals might bring single-digit growth.

Google: Volume Of Searches, 2008

It’s easy to focus on share of searches and forget that search volume tells perhaps a more important story. That’s because, as I pointed out in my initial caveats, if the “pie” of searches gets larger, then even a smaller slice might indicate growth.

Below is the volume of searches Google handled each month in the United States, as measured in billions (Hitwise doesn’t report volume figures so isn’t shown):

Bottom line? Google went from an estimated 4.5-to-6 billion searches per month in January to a 5-to-8 billion searches in December.

Prediction? I’d expect Google to add 1 to 2 billion searches by the end of 2009, putting it in the 6-to-9 billion searches per month range.

Yahoo: Volume Of Searches, 2008

Remember how Yahoo’s share had declined and then leveled off? Consider instead its search volume:

Those are pretty static lines. Nielsen has it basically level. Compete shows a very slight decline, while comScore actually shows it gained searches.

Bottom line? Yahoo went from an estimated 1.4-to-2.4 billion searches per month in January to a 1.4-to-2.5 billion searches in December.

Prediction? I’d expect Yahoo to stay in the 1.4-to-2.5 billion searches range by the end of 2009.

Microsoft: Volume Of Searches, 2008

Similar to Yahoo, Microsoft’s search volume has stayed relatively static. It has to be noted, however, that 1/3 of that volume comes from the Club Live program. For example, in December 2008, Microsoft had 769 million “regular” searches and 408 searches on Club Live, for a total of 1.2 billion searches overall.

Bottom line? Microsoft went from an estimated 900 million-to-1 billion searches per month in January to 850 million-to-1.2 billion searches in December.

Prediction? I’d expect Microsoft to stay in the 1 billion searches range by the end of 2009.

Want more? For more about search market share, consider becoming a Search Engine Land member so that you have access to all the stories categorized in the Stats: Popularity area of our Members Library. Plus you get many other benefits and help support this site!

Also consider attending our upcoming SMX West search marketing conference in Santa Clara, California this Feb. 10-12. The Searchscape: Latest Stats About The Search Engines session on Feb. 11 features representatives from the major ratings services exploring issues like those in this story.