Well, no surprises here…. Recently released US search data for June by comScore (via: Business Insider) shows that Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) search engine retains its top position, Bing is the distant second with slight gains while Yahoo’s market share has declined from the previous month. Google has maintained its monopoly in the market.
Here are the key statistics from Schachter’s report:
- The market share of Google jumped 0.1 % from 66.7 % in May to 66.8 % in June.
- Bing witnessed 0.2 % growth to 15.6 % in June from 15.4 % in May.
- Yahoo is the ultimate loser, declining from 13.4 % in May to 13 % in June.
Though Bing gained slightly, Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) must have been disappointed as its search engine couldn’t make much of a dent in Google’s stake, despite continued investments by Microsoft in Bing. Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) has been losing the ground month after month, and from the beginning of 2012 the company has lost 0.8 percent market share till June.
Schachter’s analysis only looks at desktop browsing. Mobile search, which is growing at a much faster pace, is also dominated by Google.
It doesn’t mean Google has no threats. Though Bing and Yahoo are separate sites, their core remains the same – Yahoo searches are powered by Bing. Another problem is that Google search is increasingly becoming ineffective despite a series of Panda updates. Google still believes in algorithms above everything else. Unfortunately, the algorithm has little wisdom or common sense at times, and therefore sometimes it accidentally ends up removing the useful content instead of web spam.
An often ignored trouble for Google is that social media has increasingly been reducing the need of traditional searches for a number of purposes. It would be interesting to see how Google tackles these problems and maintains the lead.
