Search Engine Statistics:: Google’s share dips

Although, Google continues to dominate the search market in U.S. I think there must be some alarm bells ringing in their mind. In the month of March 2010, there are atleast a couple of news pieces which won’t have brought joy to the Mountain View headquarters! Both of these studies were conducted by Experian Hitwise, a leader in online competitive intelligence services.

1. Popularity In a blog-post dated 15th March’ 10, Hitwise had talked about Facebook displacing Google as the most popular website in US with a weekly market share of 7.07% in comparison to Google’s 7.03%
2. Search Share Yesterday, in another study they announced that Google’s monthly search market share has dipped by 1%.  In other words, what it means is that for the month of March 2010, around 69.97% of US searches were conducted on Google.com. Whereas, for February 2010, it stood at 70.95%.
3. Sector wise trends: If we look at vertical searches, all is not lost for Google as they continue to rise in Automotive, Shopping and travel verticals.  The only exception is the Health sector, whereas Bing has made rapid strides.  Here is a graphic that I prepared on Hitwise study.
   

The study says, among the top three search engines, Google sent the most visits to the four categories below. Google’s percentage of upstream traffic grew for the Automotive, Shopping and Travel categories. Yahoo! Search saw gains in the Automotive category. Bing saw double-digit growth among three categories, including a 125 percent increase in the Health category.

Interesting times, would be equally insightful to see how the search trends for Google shape up in India.

Reference Links

1. Experience Hitewise Pree-release: Google received 70% of U.S. searches

2. Facebook Reaches Top Ranking in US (Via Hitwise Blog)