Google's Market Share

[gobeyond]

I have been hearing all sorts of numbers as to the percentage of internet users who use Google vs Yahoo vs MSN.

Is there a reliable source that has more recent and more accurate data? Thanks!

[rainborick]

There are companies that purport to have accurate data, but when you look at any of them in detail, it seems to me that the information is pretty fuzzy. There's traffic data, which gets muddled because the search engines are into so many services other than plain search. And then there are surveys of different kinds that are always subject to criticism about the sampling methods. So its a lot of soft information that can be interpreted in many different ways.

I think you have to say that Google dominates search, Yahoo! has a firm grip on its 2nd tier, and MSN is struggling to be in the same league as the other two - no matter how the numbers break down for the Internet as a whole. I have a couple of sites that do comparatively well in all three search engines. That is, they perform pretty evenly in Google, Yahoo! and MSN for their primary search terms. Based on those numbers, I see about 60% of the search traffic coming from the various Googles, about 25% from Yahoo!, 10-15% from MSN, and a handful of minor players taking up the rest. When I see other webmasters talking about this, they seem to have about the same results. When MSN Live gets featured in Windows Vista, there's bound to be a bit of a shakeup, so there's nothing fixed in granite at this point anyway.

[Kostis Panayotakis]

I experience about 70% of search traffic from the various google URLs.

There are reports that G has more than 47% search traffic share in the US (2006). Numbers in local markets vary.

[attak]

Here are the figures for "search market share" according to a recent report by McAfee SiteAdvisor (http://www.siteadvisor.com/studies/search_safety_dec2006.html):

1. Google - 49.6%
2. Yahoo - 23.9%
3. MSN - 8.8%
4. AOL - 6.2%
5. ASK - 2.8%

I'm not exactly sure what SiteAdvisor's complete definition of "Search Market Share" is because in this other article (http://www.informationweek.com/industries/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=196603894) it mentions that Yahoo is the leading site for unique audience with 130 million visitors in November.

While it is good information to know, in my opinion, the amount of total users/traffic a search engine has shouldn't be the primary basis for targeting one SE over another with your Optimization and/or PPC campaigns. The most important factor you should consider is which SE attracts the most traffic from your "paying target market".
For example, if Google is showing you that they have 1,000,000 searches per month for Widget-A, while Yahoo is showing only 500,000, you would initially want to target Google. Once you had a chance to track the standard performance analytics and discovered that Google only converted 2% of those searches into sales while Yahoo was pushing 10%, which SE do you think would get your attention?

The one thing to remember is that if you are able to properly track your SEO/M campaigns once your site has a few decent rankings, you should be able to discern which search engines best attract your paying target market, and in turn, generate the most profits for you or your client.

You may have known all of this already and I apologize for the rant in advance if that is the case; but hopefully this helped those that didn't.

Attak