Google US Search Market Share: 65% or 56%?

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On Tuesday when we noted the HitWise search market share figures, we noted how many search measuring metrics differ from source to source.  Some news out of Nielsen/NetRatings from yesterday shows what a stark difference there can be.  It isn’t that one source is right or wrong per se, but the methodologies and the sampling pool of users are different from source to source. 

Google (GOOG-NASDAQ) search took an estimated 4 Billion searches for 56.3% of the U.S. search market, followed by Yahoo!’s (YHOO-NASDAQ) 1.54 Billion searched 21.5% of the U.S. search market.  Microsoft’s (MSFT-NASDAQ) MSN/Live had 605 million searches for an 8.4% stake, Time Warner’s (TWX-NYSE) AOL had 381.9 million searches for a 5.3% market share, and IAC/Interactive’s (IACI-NASDAQ) Ask.com had 142.4 million searches for a 2% market share.

This particular survey showed Ask.com with the only drop in its market share year over year, but the calculations for the gains elsewhere seems different than before.  You can compare this Nielsen/NetRatings data to that of Hitwise from Tuesday and you’ll see why we warned ahead of time how different search results and metrics are from source to source.

Jon C. Ogg
June 21, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at [email protected]; he does not own securities in any of the companies he covers.