Google Once Again Claims 67% Search Market Share

It’s hardly headline news that Google is by far the most popular search engine for users in the U.S. and most of the world. But what is headline worthy: for two of the past three months, Google has owned 67 percent of the U.S. search market.

Google hit the unprecedented search market share of 67 percent for the first time in November 2012, then dipped slightly to 66.7 percent in December, only to rebound to 67 percent in January, comScore reported.
In January 2012, Google’s search market share was still the far and away leader in the U.S., at 65.6 percent.
As we reported earlier this month, Google is the most popular search engine globally. That same report also revealed that Yandex had passed Bing to become the fourth most used search engine, behind Baidu and Yahoo, respectively.

Despite a renewed push with TV commercials promoting the Bing It On challenge, it seems U.S. users aren’t being convinced to break the Google habit. But it’s not all bad news for Google’s closest U.S. rival.
Bing reached a new milestone as well – 16.5 percent (up from 16.3 percent in December). In January 2012, Bing's U.S. search market share stood at 15.2 percent.

Microsoft’s search engine is still miles behind Google, even when you add in Yahoo’s Bing-powered search market share. Search results powered by Google totaled 69.3 percent in January, up from 69.1 percent in December, while Bing-powered searches held steady from December at 25.6 percent.

As for Yahoo, CEO Marissa Mayer has made no secret that she’s not happy with the Microsoft-Yahoo search deal, which has seen Yahoo and Bing basically swapping search market share over the past two years, rather than eat into Google’s gigantic lead. Holding to form, Bing went up, and Yahoo went down in January.
Yahoo’s search market share dropped from 12.2 percent in December to 12.1 percent in January. Yahoo’s search market share stood at 14.1 percent in January 2012. Yahoo has lost search market share 13 out of the last 16 months and has been dropping year-over-year dating back to January 2007, when Yahoo was at 28.1 percent.

Ask’s search market share dropped to 2.8 percent in January, down from 3 percent in December. AOL also declined – from 1.8 percent in December to 1.7 percent in January.

The number of core searches jumped to 17.6 billion in January, an increase of 11 percent compared to December. Google sites led the way with 13.1 billion searches (up 11 percent) followed by Microsoft sites with 3.2 billion searches (up 12 percent), Yahoo sites with 2.3 billion (up 9 percent), Ask Network with 536 million, and AOL with 331 million (up 7 percent).