Google's internet search dominance challenged by Micro-hoo?

August 17, 2009

Google had a 65 percent share of internet searches in the U.S. in June, still the top spot by a good margin. But the combined power of Microsoft and Yahoo, which have joined together on internet search under Microsoft's Bing search engine, grabbed a combined 28 percent, according to comScore.

Although the two companies' combined search still lags Google by a wide margin, their combined search audience offers opportunity to become more competitive in the search marketplace, comScore said in its analysis.

"The recently announced search partnership between Microsoft and Yahoo certainly makes the combined entity a more formidable competitor to Google in the U.S. search marketplace," said Eli Goodman, comScore search evangelist.

The challenge for Micro-hoo will be to create a search experience compelling enough to convert lighter searchers into regular searchers, which is generally easier than converting new users, comScore said.

Despite research showing that Microsoft and Yahoo are gaining on Google, the biggest internet search company has something else in its favor.

Those who searched on Google had the highest loyalty rate, with 68.9 percent of all their searches occurring on Google sites. Users of the engines at Yahoo and Microsoft sites conducted 32.6 percent of their searches on those sites, but the remaining 60.7 percent of their searches were on Google.

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