Google Grabs Globe, U.S. to Yahoo!
One-third of worldwide English-speaking searchers choose Google, while Yahoo! holds a narrow edge in the U.S.
Google, the search engine that has penetrated the vernacular as a verb, accounts for one-third of all the worldwide searches of English-speaking Internet users, according to measurements from comScore Media Metrix qSearch, while Yahoo holds a narrow 3-point edge over Google in U.S. searches (26 percent compared to 23 percent).
| Share of Worldwide and U.S. Consumer Searches, January 2003 (includes searches at sub-channels such as Yahoo Finance or MSN Shopping) |
||
|---|---|---|
| Worldwide English-Speaking |
United States | |
| 33% | 23% | |
| Yahoo | 24% | 26% |
| MSN | 19% | 17% |
| AOL Proprietary & WWW | 12% | 20% |
| Source: comScore Media Metrix qSearch | ||
comScore’s qSearch breaks down the figures even further, analyzing usage for home, work and university Internet searchers.
| Share of Total U.S. Searches by Location, January 2003 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Home Users |
Work Users |
University Users |
|
| Yahoo | 25% | 26% | 27% |
| AOL | 25% | 14% | 18% |
| 23% | 27% | 31% | |
| MSN | 15% | 22% | 12% |
| Source: comScore Media Metrix qSearch | |||
While a January 2003 OneStat report indicates that the global usage share of Yahoo increased from 20.6 percent to 22.1 percent since November 2002, the global usage share of Google decreased 0.4 percent during that time.
| Search Engine Global Usage Share | |
|---|---|
| 54.7% | |
| Yahoo | 22.1% |
| MSN Search | 9.5% |
| AOL Search | 3.7% |
| Terra Lycos | 2.8% |
| Altavista | 2.5% |
| Askjeeves | 1.5% |
| Source: OneStat, January 2003 | |
Data from qSearch demonstrates reveals that smaller sites, such as Dogpile and Ask Jeeves, appear to have earned positions as “destination” search sites, demonstrated by visitor-to-searcher conversion rates of 83 and 75 percent, respectively. Dogpile’s meta-search capability, which allows users to search multiple engines at once, and Ask Jeeves’s natural language search capability have clearly helped establish these sites as important resources for a loyal base of consumers.
| Average Visitor-to-Searcher Conversion Rate, January 2003 |
||
|---|---|---|
| Avg Visitor-to- Searcher Conversion Rate |
Avg Weekly Searches per Searcher |
|
| Total U.S. Internet | 64% | 10.8 |
| Dogpile | 83% | 5.0 |
| 82% | 9.4 | |
| Ask Jeeves | 75% | 4.4 |
| Altavista | 58% | 4.8 |
| AOL | 54% | 7.9 |
| MSN | 52% | 4.9 |
| Yahoo | 51% | 7.1% |
| Lycos | 30% | 2.8 |
| Netscape | 25% | 4.2 |
| Source: comScore Media Metrix qSearch | ||
While comScore analyzes the search engines, OneStat takes a look at the search phrases that drive traffic to sites.
| Most Popular Word Phrases | |
|---|---|
| 2 word phrases | 29.22% |
| 1 word phrase | 24.76% |
| 3 word phrases | 24.33% |
| 4 word phrases | 12.34% |
| 5 word phrases | 5.43% |
| 6 word phrases | 2.21% |
| 7 word phrases | 0.94% |
| Source: OneStat, April 2003 | |
