Google Search Continues to Increase Market Dominance
comScore’s report for February search engine queries has been released, and it shows continued gains by Google and yet more bad news for Yahoo and Microsoft Live Search.
Google now holds 59.2% of all American search queries, a .7% gain over January. Yahoo declined .6% from January, to 21.6% of all activity, while Microsoft went down .2%, to 9.6% of market share.
The only other site to gain a share was Ask.com, which gained .1% and is retooling itself to cater more to its Ask Jeeves roots.
Overall search engine queries declined in February by about 6%, but that is mostly due to there being two fewer days to rack up the numbers than January.
Not the most exciting news, for sure, but it does underline the slow-but-steady crawl Google is making toward total dominance. Unless Yahoo and Microsoft figure something out relating to search, Google may hold a 90% monopoly on search in the next few years. Other engines have to ask themselves if it’s even worth trying to go after them, especially with the ubiquitous Google search bar plugged right in the upper right corner of so many people’s web browsers.
Some specialized search engines, like our social media search engine Zudos.com, or Wikimedia’s Wikia Search, will likely rise up as the urge to create a more people-powered kind of search arises in the wake of Google’s dominance.
For now, Google search is a runaway train headed towards the top, and there’s not much in the way to stop it.
Technorati Tags: comscore, google, zudos, wikia search
