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Google's Share of Searches Falling? Or Increasing?

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the damn-liars-and-statisticians dept.

prostoalex writes "Get two research companies in the room, and you'll likely end up with three opinions. Bear Sterns quotes ComScore Networks data, which says that Google's share of searches is slipping, down to 36.9% in June 2005. WebSideStory, a Web research company, on the other hand, claims that in June 2005 Google hit a new record as far as share of searches, hitting 52%, and leaving rivals far behind."

4 of 220 comments (clear)

  1. Quality, not Quantity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    IT's far more important _which_ searches they're getting. In my online advertising efforts, the quality of traffic coming from Google is FAR superior to what we're getting out of MSN, AOL, etc.

  2. You mean Google is more popular... by Catiline · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Have Google searches replaced DNS for web name lookup? Not yet, you say? Then they aren't the most popular search engine yet!

    --
    Do you like Japanese imports?
  3. As Mark Twain once said by Case42 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There are lies, damn lies and statistics. Personally I can't remember the last time I used something other than Google for a search and what other search engine has had it's name verbed in common usage? Even back in the day when AltaVista was the search engine of choice I never heard anyone say "AltaVista it".

  4. Google Owns. by Egorn · · Score: 5, Interesting

    When I first read the report on the 19th (Google - 36.9%, Yahoo! - 30.4%, MSN - 15.7%), I called BS. Here's my reasoning. Just before Star Wars was released, I held the number one search spot for "Star Wars Trailer" (no quotes) on ALL three mentioned search engines for a week. I got a million hits in about 2 days. 69% were Google, 14% from Yahoo and 2% from MSN.

    I later moved down to 4th in Google but held my place in Y!/MSN. The scores shifted very slightly but remained in favor of Google. Unless this proves that Star Wars geeks are primarily Google users, it proves the surveys innaccurate in favor of MSN and Yahoo!.

    That's my 0.02.

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