Google Still Search King, Apparently At Microsoft's Expense (GOOG, MSFT, YHOO, IACI)

Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) picked up its share of US Internet Search compared to the prior August with almost 64% of US searches, according to Hitwise.  Be advised, data from Hitwise often varies greatly from comScore and other web traffic ranking mechanisms.  The Hitwise sample is supposed to be based upon 10 million U.S. Internet users.  Here is a table:

                          AUG-07    JUL-07    AUG-06
Google.com    63.98%    64.35%    59.99%
Yahoo.com     22.87%    22.13%    22.73%
MSN.com        7.98%       8.79%      11.86%
Ask.com          3.49%       3.21%       3.37%

It appears based upon the chart that the big gains year over year are at the expense of Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), who combined with its own Live.com search showed the largest drop year-over-year and showed the largest just month-over-month.  Yahoo! NASDAQ:YHOO) actually got a small pick-up month over month and slightly better compared to August 2006.  Google is still the winner by far, but they gave a marginal amount over the prior month.  As a reminder, this is not on the number of searches.  This pertains to the percentage of total search.

Jon C. Ogg
September 19, 2007