Any Way You Cut it, Google Owned February

Google continued its dominating ways in February as it grew its market share year-over-year, according to comScore, Nielsen Online and Hitwise. The search giant’s exact market share, however, is not completely agreed upon by the three companies.

According to comScore, Google claimed 63.3 percent of the U.S. search market in February, a slight uptick from its 63.0 percent market share in January. Last February, comScore pegged Google’s market share at 59.2 percent.

Yahoo! was second with 20.6 percent of the market in February, shedding a bit of its 21.0 percent share in the previous month. Its market share remained relatively unchanged from 21.6 percent in the same month last year.

Microsoft was third with 8.2 percent of the market, down from 8.5 percent in January, and even further down from its 9.6 percent share during the same month last year.

Ask.com was fourth with 4.1 percent, reflecting an increase from its 3.7 percent share in January, but down from its 4.6 percent share in February 208.

AOL LLC was fifth with 3.9 percent of the market, unchanged from January but down from its 4.9 percent share in the same month last year.

According to Nielsen Online, Google held 63.5 percent of the market in February, reflecting year-over-year growth of 19.2 percent. This translated into 5.4 billion searches during the month.

Yahoo! was second with 16.7 percent of all searches in the U.S. in February, while Microsoft was third with 10.4 percent.

AOL was fourth with 3.8 percent, reflecting a 19.9 percent year-over-year decline, while Ask.com finished February in fifth place with 1.9 percent of the market.

In February, 8.5 billion queries were conducted in the U.S., according to Nielsen Online.

Hitwise had the most generous market share for Google, pegging its stake of the pie at 72.1 percent in February, up slightly from January up 8 percent from February 2008.

Yahoo!, according to Hitwise, had 17.0 percent of the market, down 17 percent from the same month last year.

Microsoft held onto 5.6 percent of the market in February, down 20 percent from 7.0 percent in the same month last year. Ask.com finished fourth with 3.7 percent of the market, reflecting a loss of 10 percent of its 4.2 percent share in the February 2008.

Sources:</strong

http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2750

http://www.nielsen-online.com/pr/pr_090310.pdf

http://hitwise.com/press-center/hitwiseHS2004/google-searches-02-09.php