The latest search engine stats from Nielsen bring good news for Bing, which now has more than 10% market share for the first time in … well, longer than I can remember.

Nielsen says Bing captured 10.7% of all searches in August, up from 9.0% in July. Based on that jump, Nielsen says Bing is the fastest growing search provide in its Top 10. Google remains a distant number one with almost 65% market share in Nielsen’s survey. Nielsen’s numbers are included below.

Top 10 Search Providers for August 2009, Ranked by Searches (U.S.)
+------------------------------+-------------+----------+------------+
| Provider                     |  Searches   | M-O-M %  |  Share of  |
|                              |    (000)    |  Growth  |  Searches  |
+------------------------------+-------------+----------+------------+
| Total                        | 10,812,734  |   2.9%   |   100.0%   |
| Google Search                |  6,986,580  |   2.6%   |   64.6%    |
| Yahoo! Search                |  1,726,060  |  -4.2%   |   16.0%    |
| MSN/Windows Live/Bing Search |  1,156,415  |  22.1%   |   10.7%    |
| AOL Search                   |   333,231   |   1.8%   |    3.1%    |
| Ask.com Search               |   186,270   |   2.9%   |    1.7%    |
| My Web Search                |   128,432   |   0.5%   |    1.2%    |
| Comcast Search               |   50,328    |  -21.6%  |    0.5%    |
| Yellow Pages Search          |   37,923    |   2.7%   |    0.4%    |
| NexTag Search                |   31,830    |   0.4%   |    0.3%    |
| Local.com Search             |   16,314    |   2.9%   |    0.2%    |
+------------------------------+-------------+----------+------------+
Source: Nielsen MegaView Search

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:

In the world of competition between and among websites, search engines and online publishers there is also the “behind the scenes” competition between Nielsen and comScore. Both want to be the source of record for traffic data and both are occasionally the subject of controversy.

There was the incident early in 2008 where comScore put out a report that Google’s paid clicks were down, sending Google shares down. But when Google announced a very strong Q1, comScore shares then took a hit and the company had to go into damage control mode. More recently Nielsen reported that despite Twitter’s massive growth it was only “retaining” 40% of users. There was an immediate and vocal backlash, putting Nielsen on the defensive. However the company stood by its numbers after a second look.

Despite outward confidence and appearances of objectivity, these measurement services are subject to human error (interpreting the data) and occasionally just screw up. However, advertisers, banks, the press and others with an interest in tracking uniques and traffic growth don’t trust the numbers put out by the publishers themselves. So third party measurement and validation is a high stakes game.

The newest metrics controversy, this time pitting comScore against Nielsen, involves Hulu. As the New York Times reports, comScore recently reported almost 42 million unique visitors for Hulu compared with only 8.9 million according to Nielsen. However both data providers show high percentage growth at Hulu. But Hulu was frustrated and upset with the Nielsen figures that show unique visitors declining from March to April.

Quantcast and Compete, imperfect and in disagreement themselves, show Hulu’s numbers closer to those put out by Nielsen than comScore’s estimates:

Google Trends data sits between the Nielsen and comScore numbers:

The obvious conclusion is that one has to look broadly at all the numbers and use the consensus and directional trends. This is something of a mantra for Danny in reviewing the search market share data.

I’ve asked Hitwise to weigh in and will update this story if they do.

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.

For the several years Nielsen and local SEM platform provider WebVisible have done research tracking online consumer behavior related to local search. Here is our write up of the previous round of findings from the last survey (October, 2007). Over the weekend I got a preview of some of the data from the most recent survey findings.

This latest Nielsen-WebVisible survey captured responses from just under 4,000 U.S. internet users. The questions sought to determine which tools and media they were using to find local business and related information. In the sample were also 261 small business (SMB) owners. The most interesting high level finding, beyond the prominence of search engines, re-exposes the gap between consumer and SMB advertiser behavior.

Consumer data

Most commonly used local business information resources:

1. 82% Search engines
2. 57% Print yellow pages
3. 53% Local newspapers
4. 49% Internet yellow pages
5. 49% Television
6. 38% Direct mail
7. 32% White pages directories

Primary tool/resource:

1. Search engines — 50%
2. Print yellow pages — 24%
3. Online yellow pages — 10%

Changing consumer behavior patterns over the past two years:

There’s a net loss for all the print media.

But there’s a lag between the consumer behavior and what SMB advertisers are doing.

Small business advertiser data

Some caution should be used here because the sample size is small (n=261). But directionally the findings are consistent with other surveys in the market. The survey found that search engines were the top resource used by SMB owners for local lookups. This of course makes sense because SMBs are consumers as well.

The survey also found that 44% of SMBs have a website. Of those with a website:

• 61% spend less than three hours a week marketing it
• 51% believe their sites’ customer acquisition capability is “fair” or “poor”

Additional SMB advertiser findings:

• 78% of SMB respondents said they dedicate 10% or less of their overall budget to marketing efforts.
• 50% of survey respondents spent less than 10% of their marketing budget on internet advertising, while 30% of respondents did no internet advertising at all.
• Only 26% have invested in search marketing to promote their business

Compare this to the finding that 82% of consumers use search engines to find local businesses.

Other relevant SMB advertiser and consumer data:

• TMP-comScore “local search” study
• Small Businesses Struggle with Search Marketing

Nielsen released some UK mobile usage data yesterday that are very interesting on a number of fronts. The highest-level findings reflect that in the UK the mobile internet is growing much faster than the PC internet (8x) and that the average age of mobile users is younger than online.

There are now more than 7 million mobile internet users in the UK according to Nielsen. That compares with more than 40 million in the US.

The mobile internet audience is about 20 percent the size of the UK online audience. In the US, where the raw numbers are much larger in both categories, the proportion is roughly the same — the mobile internet audience is about 22 percent of the total online population.

Here are some of the numbers Nielsen released:

• From Q2 to Q3 2008, the number of Britons using mobile Internet increased by 25% (from 5.8 to 7.3 million) compared to 3% for PC-based Internet (34.3 to 35.3 million Britons)
• The mobile Internet audience has a higher concentration of younger users than PC-based Internet; 25% of mobile Internet consumers are aged 15-24 compared to 16% for PC-based consumers. Whilst, 23% of the PC-based Internet population is 55+, only 12% of the mobile Internet audience is

Compare UK audience size and growth for mobile and online (3 percent online vs. 25 percent in mobile):

Source: Nielsen (11/08)

What’s also interesting is that Nielsen said that some of the popular UK sites it’s tracking actually have greater reach in mobile than online (percentages in the chart represent audience reach):

Source: Nielsen (11/08)

BBC Weather, Sky sports and Gmail actually have greater usage in mobile. As you can see from the chart above, the greatest discrepancy between mobile and online is with Google. According to Nielsen:

“Whilst Google Search is the most popular PC-based Internet site, on mobile Internet BBC News is the most popular, being visited by 24% of British mobile Internet consumers (1.7 million people).”

The only explanation here can be that UK users simply don’t proportionately search as much in mobile as they do online. (There are other data that do show lots of mobile search usage and frequency.) But this finding and the greater mobile reach of some mobile sites is fascinating.

All the data coming out from the various research houses support the idea that search marketers need to think about mobile now and take it seriously because it will only grow as a source of traffic. It’s all but certain that eventually we’ll see more global search volume from mobile devices than online. The only question is when.

With the latest search popularity stats now in from Hitwise, Nielsen, comScore, and Compete, it’s time to pit them against each other and see what they agree — and don’t agree – about in terms of search engine popularity.

Why not show a full year’s worth of data? Ratings methodology changes mean I can only go back to June 2007 for comScore and October 2007 for Nielsen.

Normally I would also show raw number of searches in addition to search share. See the caveats section below which explains why this is important. However, I don’t have Compete figures this month. Without them, I didn’t want to generate charts with data only from Nielsen and comScore. Those charts will return next time.

Services shown in the charts blow:

• CS stands for comScore
   
• NR stands for Nielsen Online
   
• HW stands for Hitwise
   
• CP stands for Compete

The charts show the share of searches in the United States that each ratings service estimates each search engine to have. In other countries, shares will be different — often dramatically so.

Finally, the charts use different scales. Rather than running them all from zero to 100 percent, I’ve tightened them between low and high marks unique to each service. This can make ups-and-downs seem more dramatic, but it also means you can better see specific changes with each service.

Google

What, you were expecting a decline? Google’s exact share may differ from ratings service to ratings service. But everyone agrees — Google’s going up, up, up.

Yahoo

Yes, Yahoo’s seeing declines overall — though in raw number of searches (see Nielsen and comScore), it pretty much has stayed the same. It’s not that Yahoo is losing search traffic. Google’s getting more of new traffic.

Microsoft

Everyone now gives Microsoft less than 10 percent share of the US market. In terms of raw searches, the picture’s similar to Yahoo, where Microsoft is largely keeping the same number of searches.

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.

Another ratings service shows Google hitting an all-time high for search share in the United States. This is according to April 2008 search share stats from Nielsen Online that were released (PDF) today. Last week, Hitwise also reported Google hitting a new record. Microsoft also dips below the 10 percent mark for the first time.

Here are the percentage shares for the top five search engines shown in the pie chart above:

• Google: 62.0%
• Yahoo: 17.5%
• Microsoft: 9.7%
• AOL: 4.3%
• Ask: 2.1%

Note that in the chart above, traffic from Ask.com-owned My Web Search is not combined by Nielsen with the Ask figure. If it were, the Ask figure would rise to 2.8 percent.

The trend over time? Here’s data going back to November 2007 (data from previous periods doesn’t compare because Nielsen changed its methodology):

Google hit a new high, up from its previous high last month. Both Yahoo and Microsoft hit new lows after previous lows last month, but Microsoft’s was more dramatic.

How about number of searches versus market share?

• Google: 5.1 billion
• Yahoo: 1.5 billion
• Microsoft: 796 million
  AOL: 352 million
• Ask: 172 million

The trend:

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.

I’ve now compiled the latest search popularity stats from Hitwise, Compete, comScore, and Nielsen Online. That means it’s time to put them all together once again, to see what a "panel" of ratings services agree on — and don’t agree on — in terms of search engine popularity.

Why not show a full year’s worth of data? Ratings methodology changes mean I can only go back to June 2007 for comScore and October 2007 for Nielsen. Also, in terms of raw number of searches, Hitwise doesn’t report these, so they aren’t on the number of searches charts below.

Services shown in the charts blow:

• CS stands for comScore
   
• NR stands for Nielsen Online
   
• HW stands for Hitwise
   
• CP stands for Compete

The charts show the share of searches in the United States that each ratings service estimates each search engine to have. In other countries, shares will be different — often dramatically so.

Finally, the charts use different scales. Rather than running them all from zero to 100 percent, I’ve tightened them between low and high marks unique to each service. This can make ups-and-downs seem more dramatic, but it also means you can better see specific changes with each service.

Google

Everyone but Compete agrees — Google’s share shown in the chart above had either hit an all-time high or tied it from the previous month
 

In terms of number of searches, everyone agrees that Google is at an all time high. But NetRatings reports significantly fewer searches than the other two services. (Figures above are in billions.)

Yahoo

NetRatings and Hitwise say that Yahoo has had worst months than March, while comScore and Compete put it at an all-time low.

In terms of number of searches, Yahoo comes off better, relatively stable over the period according to comScore and NetRatings. (Figures above are in billions.)

Microsoft

Both NetRatings and Compete show a spike upward for Microsoft — Compete dramatically so. For the others, a slight decline, less dramatic than in some past months. (Postscript: See below about Compete results now being adjusted downward).

In terms of number of searches, everyone shows a better picture for Microsoft, with gains. Note the large leap by Compete, bringing its measurements nearly in line with the other two. Did Microsoft gain that much, or did how Compete measures Microsoft change?

POSTSCRIPT:Compete counted searches in March from Club Live that it thought it was filtering out, which inflated the Microsoft figures. I’m not going to redo all the charts due to the time involved. Future charts will reflect the new figures. Microsoft had a 8.5% share for March, rather than 10.2%. See Microsoft Dips In Compete’s Revised March 08 Search Figures for more.

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.