Google Wins Another Month

The most recent figures released by Hitwise indicate that Google gained more ground in the search market in August, displaying big growth compared to the same month last year.

Google handled 71.01% of all U.S. searches conducted in August, reflecting an increase from July’s 70.77% share, and an even more impressive gain from last August’s 63.98% share.

Yahoo! was second with an 18.26% share in August, a decline from July’s 18.65% share, and an even bigger decline from last August’s 22.87% share.

MSN/Live was third with 5.32% of the U.S. search market, a slight drop off from July’s 5.36% share, and a decline from last August’s 6.53% share.

Ask.com was fourth with 3.45% of the market in August, a decline from July’s 3.53%, and a slight decline from last August’s 3.49% share.

The Hitwise report also lists the upstream traffic from search engines (and Google in particular) to popular categories of Web sites. Health and Medical sites received 44.24% of their traffic from search engines in August, a 3% increase from last August. Not surprisingly, 31.07% of this category’s traffic came from Google, a 12% increase from the same time last year.

Travel received 35.26% from search engines (25.97% from Google), while Shopping and Classifieds sites received 25.05% of their traffic from search engines in August (17.55% from Google).

Social Networking sites received 16.47% of their traffic from search engines, a 23% increase from last August. Online video sites received 30.96% of their traffic from search engines, a 33% increase from last August. Sports (12.75%), Business and Finance (18.73%), and Entertainment sites (23.29%) all saw double-digit increases in the amounts of traffic they received from search engines this August compared to last.

It would appear that traditional search is locked up for Google for the foreseeable future. The only dim hope anyone has for overtaking Google is in the mobile realm, where Yahoo! has a relatively strong foothold, as Google is lagging behind in the number of carrier deals it has locked into place. This hope is slim at best, since Google is dominating search shares in the mobile realm as well.


Source:
http://hitwise.com/press-center/hitwiseHS2004/google-receives-percentage.php