For Those of You Just Joining Us: A Lot of People Use Google

February 11, 2009 at 11:23 am PT

A new survey by Forrester Research suggests that there’s still room in the search market for a Google killer. Brand loyalty there is apparently quite low, although you wouldn’t know it from the industry’s monthly search engine rankings, which consistently show Google (GOOG) holding the lion’s share of the market.

According to Nielsen Online’s January 2009 U.S. search engine rankings, 9.4 billion queries were submitted to search engines during the month, an estimated 5.9 billion of them to Google. That means the company captured 62.8 percent of all search queries conducted during that time, enjoying 40.8 percent year-over-year growth. Meanwhile, Yahoo (YHOO) captured just 16.2 percent of the U.S. search market in January, posting 8.7 percent year-over-year growth. Windows Live managed an 11.2 percent share with 18.3 percent year-over-year growth.

Tagged with: Google, John Paczkowski, Microsoft, Nielsen, search, Yahoo

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Ed Tan

Buy Yahoo stock! It is the top rated site on alexa.com and with Carol Bartz she will definitely revamp yahoo as a very stron competitor. I see Yahoo stocks at least around $23-30 a share by the end of this year. The stimulus package will help out businesses and a portion of the money they get will be used for advertising.
Shar VanBoskirk

I’m actually the author of the Forrester report you reference here and I wanted to provide a correction and clarification to your conclusions from the research.

My study actually shows that Google has the *highest* search loyalty of all search engines. It owns 59% of all searchers and 28% use it exclusively, compared to 16% who use Yahoo exclusively. My research has nothing to do with dethroning Google or questioning its lead in this market.

Rather, the research focuses on when marketers should advertise on non-Google engines. Turns out, consumers actually prefer smaller engines for some types of searches. So advertisers should consider these engines in their paid search buys.