Google Wins and Gains in December
Google drew 72.07 percent of the U.S. search market in December 2008, according to Hitwise’s most recent figures. For the overall year, Google boasted 69.48 percent of the market.
The search giant’s December market share reflected an increase from November’s 71.97 percent share, and a rather large surge from its 65.98 percent share in December 2007.
Yahoo! finished the month with 17.79 percent of the market, an increase from its 17.70 percent share in November. This reflects a much slimmer share of the pie compared to last December when Yahoo! had 20.88 percent of the market. It finished 2008 overall with 19.16 percent of the market.
MSN/Live finished third in December with 5.56 percent of the market, an improvement on its 5.45 percent share in November. Microsoft finished the overall year with 5.88 percent of the market. Last December it held 7.04 percent of the search market.
Ask.com finished fourth with 3.15 percent of the market in December, a decline from its 3.35 percent share in November. For 2008 overall it held 3.80 percent of the market. In December 2007, Ask.com held 4.14 percent of the search market.
The other 44 search engines account for 1.42 percent of the search market, according to Hitwise.
Google was the guide of large amounts of traffic to health and medical sites, and handled much of travel and online video searches.
Sources:
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/01/12/google-on-pace-to-take-75-of-search-market
http://www.pcworld.com/article/15695/google_widened_lead_in_search_in_december.html
