Google, Yahoo, Ask.com Gain in January

January brought no surprises for the top seven search engines in the U.S. Of course, if you’re like the vast majority of online searchers, no rankings have changed, though market share figures have fluctuated slightly.

Google topped Nielsen Online’s rankings for January 2008, with a market share of 56.9%, which was an improvement on December 2007’s 56.3% market share. About 4.2 billion queries were conducted on Google, with each searcher entering 39.6 searches during the month. This compares favorably to December’s 4.1 billion queries, and the 37.9 searchers per searcher.

Yahoo! Search was second on the list with 19.0% of the search pie. It handled 1.4 billion queries in January, with each searcher conducting 25.1 searches during the month. This was an improvement from December’s 17.7% market share, 1.3 billion queries, and 22.4 searchers per searcher.

MSN/Windows Live was third with a market share of 12.1%, which was a drop from December’s 13.8%. The search engine handled 894 million queries in January, with each searcher conducting 30.1 searches.

AOL Search was fourth on the list, handling 4.7% of all searches in January, with each of its searchers searching 17.2 times during the month. Its market share was unchanged from December, though it showed an uptick in terms of searchers per user, which was at 15.2.

Ask.com took in a market share of 2.4%, an increase from its 2.2% market share in December. It users searched 11.0 times during the month, an increase from the 10.0 figure in the prior month.

My Web Search (1.0%) and Comcast Search (0.5%) maintained their rankings at sixth and seventh respectively. AT&T Worldnet Search (0.3%) crept up to take the eighth spot away from NexTag Search (0.3%), while Dogpile.com Search (0.3%) shouldered past BizRate Search to take the last spot on the top 10 list.

Sources:
http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/pr/pr_080225.pdf

http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/pr/pr_080118.pdf