U.S. Search Ranks Remain Frozen

Investing

Published: November 18, 2012 11:42 am

Last Updated: November 19, 2012 5:22 am

It remains a puzzle as to why Comscore releases U.S. search engine market share each month, and as much of a mystery as to why anyone bothers to follow the numbers. Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) has a market share of 66.9% in October, barely above the 66.7% in September.

Yahoo! Inc.’s (NASDAQ: YHOO) was 12.2% — unchanged. Microsoft Corp.’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) was 16%, up from 15.9%. Every month the numbers fall in the same range. The hope that Microsoft and Yahoo! has of fundamentally combining search operations did nothing. This is particularly evident in their quarterly earnings which show no sign that search revenue as surged.

The market has already changed its attention from market share on the PC to market share on wireless devices, particularly smartphones and tablets. Yahoo! and Microsoft have each pointed to this as their opportunity to catch up to Google in share, at least on these new platforms. However, neither has given any evidence of progress, or shows any mobile based search technology which would draw Google users away.

comScore Explicit Core Search Share Report* October 2012 vs. September 2012 Total U.S. – Home & Work Locations Source: comScore qSearch
Core Search Entity	Explicit Core Search Share (%)
Core Search Entity	Sep-12	Oct-12	Point Change
Total Explicit Core Search	100.0%	100.0%	N/A
Google Sites	66.7%	66.9%	0.2
Microsoft Sites	15.9%	16.0%	0.1
Yahoo! Sites	12.2%	12.2%	0.0
Ask Network	3.5%	3.2%	-0.3
AOL, Inc.	1.8%	1.8%	0.0

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