Google Market Share, Query Lengths Grow in April

According to the latest figures released by Hitwise, Google’s U.S. search market share isn’t the only thing growing: apparently, queries are getting longer and longer.

Google claimed 72.74 percent of all searches in the U.S. in April, according to Hitwise. This reflected slight growth from its 72.39 percent share in March, and a 7 percent increase from last April’s 67.93 percent market share.

Yahoo! was second with 16.27 percent of all searches in April, a slight decline from its 16.36 percent share in March. This reflected a 20 percent drop-off from the search engine’s 20.29 percent market share in April of last year.

MSN was third with 5.68 percent of the market in April, a slight uptick from 5.50 percent in March. This reflected a 9 percent decline from its 6.27 percent market share in April 2008.

Ask.com was fourth with 3.95 percent of the market, a decline from its 4.07 percent market share in March. This also reflected a 5 percent drop from its 4.17 percent share in April of last year.

Hitwise’s report also noted that longer search queries were becoming more popular. In April, two-word queries were the most popular, accounting for 22.95 percent of all clicks in the U.S., down slightly from 23.17 percent in March. This was also a 5 percent decline from 24.27 percent in April 2008.

Three-word queries were the second most popular in April, accounting for 21.84 percent of all clicks, followed by one-word queries, accounting for 20.37 percent of all clicks.

Queries with eight or more words saw year-over-year growth of 18 percent, accounting for 3.68 percent of clicks in April, up from 3.12 percent in the same month last year.

Queries with seven words also experienced noticeable growth, accounting for 2.58 percent of all clicks in April, up 8 percent from 2.38 percent in April 2008.

Six-word queries accounted for 4.76 percent of all clicks in April, up 5 percent from 4.52 percent in the same month last year.

Five-word queries (8.78 percent of clicks in April) saw year-over-year growth of 4 percent, while four-word queries (15.04 percent of clicks in April) saw year-over-year growth of 3 percent.

The report also highlighted the increasing upstream traffic from search engines (and Google, in particular) for sites in the Online Video, Sports, Business and Finance and Entertainment categories.

Health and Medical Web sites receive the largest share of traffic from search engines (46.29 percent) and Google, specifically (33.88 percent).

Source:

http://hitwise.com/press-center/hitwiseHS2004/google-searches-04-09.php