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Google Sees Biggest Search Traffic Drop Since 2009 As Yahoo Gains Ground

Posted by Soulskill on from the and-we're-back dept.

helix2301 writes: Google's grip on the Internet search market loosened in December, as the search engine saw its largest drop since 2009. That loss was Yahoo's gain, as the Marissa Mayer-helmed company added almost 2% from November to December to bring its market share back into double digits. Google's lead remains overwhelming, with just more than three-quarters of search, according to SatCounter Global Stats. Microsoft's Bing gained some momentum to take 12.5% of the market. Yahoo now has 10.4%. All other search engines combined to take 1.9%.

32 of 155 comments (clear)

  1. Thank the Mozilla Foundation by DrunkenTerror · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Thank you Mozilla!

    1. Re:Thank the Mozilla Foundation by Shakrai · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Thank them? They changed the default search provider on all my existing Firefox profiles without my permission during the last update. I have about twelve different Firefox profiles for different things (-no-remote is your friend) and I was quite annoyed to have to change it back to my preferred setting on every single one of them. I don't begrudge them for the search deal, it was bound to happen with Google pushing Chrome so heavily, but leave the existing people alone, mmm'kay?

      --
      I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
      We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
    2. Re:Thank the Mozilla Foundation by SeaFox · · Score: 2

      I don't begrudge them for the search deal, it was bound to happen with Google pushing Chrome so heavily, but leave the existing people alone, mmm'kay?

      While I don't condone changes without the user's permission (my install of Pale Moon recently replaced my Adblock Plus with Adblock Lattitude, which appears to be a fork, without my permission), making people change was probably something Mozilla would have had to do for the referral deal to begin with. Only having the search provider change apply to new installs wouldn't have made a big difference to Yahoo -- because Firefox is in decline and there aren't a lot of new users coming to it.

    3. Re:Thank the Mozilla Foundation by Noah+Haders · · Score: 2

      this is why I use duckduckgo. a business built on a model of respecting user's privacy. obv there's no way to be sure, but at least their TOS is customer friendly rather than customer-hostile. also, !bangs ftw

  2. firefox makes yahoo default now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    clearly that 'default search provider' makes a big difference.

  3. Re:Firefox? by BronsCon · · Score: 3, Informative

    Why? Take the 2 seconds to change the default from Yahoo to Google if you care (I do and I did). If you don't care, you won't even notice, anyway.

    --
    APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
  4. Have you ever noticed that ... by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 2

    ... ever since the first search engine (altavista) appeared the search paradigm has essentially remained unchanged? ... and it's getting stale ...

    Can't the search engine companies, and I don't care if it's Bing, Google or Yahoo, come up with something new? Something that is disruptively simple and yet extra-ordinarily innovative?

    --
    Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
    1. Re:Have you ever noticed that ... by TheCycoONE · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Just case sensitivity and the ability to include symbols would be sufficiently disruptive for me.

    2. Re:Have you ever noticed that ... by jc42 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      ... ever since the first search engine (altavista) appeared the search paradigm has essentially remained unchanged? ... and it's getting stale ...

      Can't the search engine companies, and I don't care if it's Bing, Google or Yahoo, come up with something new? Something that is disruptively simple and yet extra-ordinarily innovative?

      Nah; they can't do that. The reason is simple: They're now big, established companies, and big, established companies never, ever innovate. To them, "innovation" means making a few superficial tweaks to the product's appearance, while loudly proclaiming "New! Improved!". Any true change is a threat to the product that provides their current income.

      If you want something that actually works differently, you have to go with the experimental, upstart companies. Most of them will eventually fail, of course, or if they start to succeed, they'll be bought out by one of the big guys, who will quietly shut them down. Or maybe they'll be sued out of existence by all the big guys via their list of vague patents. But a few will become "the next Google" or whatever was the successful upstart 1was called 0 years ago in their field. Then they'll no longer innovate in any meaningful sense.

      --
      Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
    3. Re:Have you ever noticed that ... by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I couldn't disagree more. I remember pre-Google search days quite well, and it was awful. You ended up wading through page after page after page of irrelevant crap because those search engines simply ranked pages based only on their content, and it was stupidly easy to game. Tag clouds were a direct result of this. Google entered the field and made every other search engine obsolete almost overnight, because the damn thing actually worked. In fact, it worked so well that you were even pretty likely to get the result you wanted in the very first slot - thus, the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button, which in other engines might as well have been labeled "I Feel Like I Might Have Won the Lottery".

      Even today, I use Google, because every time I experiment with another search engine, the results simply aren't as good. With Google search, I nearly always find what I'm looking for right at the top of my search. It's unbelievably rare that I have to traverse to a second page.

      BTW, in case you haven't noticed, Google search actually does a lot more than simply search now. It's allows you to find out a lot of basic facts without even leaving the search page. For instance, try typing in calories in an apple or dollars to yen. They even present those results to me before I finish typing.

      I'm sure that Google is working on new ways to improve search... after all, it's what drives eyeballs to their advertisements, so they have a huge incentive to make it work better, faster, and more intuitively than anyone else. My guess is that searches will continue to be able to answer more detailed and specific questions that people have rather than only point them to pages that have the answers. What other innovations, who can say? But I think we're past the big "disruptive" search breakthroughs - that happened once, and it was Google inventing search that actually worked.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    4. Re:Have you ever noticed that ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      I would like Google and Bing to stop correcting me. And "correcting me". And +"correcting me" -"correction" me.

      Is it too much to search for what I explicitly ask for?

  5. Google Censorship by hyades1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    As a resident of Canada, I find that Google has put a search filter in place that I can't get around. Basically, it makes me type in specific words like "breasts" or "naked" if I want to see picture results including such things. I don't spend a lot of time looking for pornography, but I don't want to worry that 10% of the the Ontario Museum's art collection is off limits to me unless I specifically go on a search for boobies.

    No doubt this protects Miss Grundy and her fellow church ladies from the sight of the occasional naked breast, but I find it offensive and paternalistic, and as a result, I've cut back quite a lot on my use of Google.

    --
    I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
    1. Re:Google Censorship by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Turn off safe search?

    2. Re:Google Censorship by quenda · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Basically, it makes me type in specific words like "breasts" or "naked" if I want to see picture results including such things.

      I think your memory is faulty. Safe-search will block nudity (Google is American), but is not over-ridden by such keywords.
      Remember the internet is so full of porn that the problem is not so much finding it, as avoiding it when you don't want it.
      So google tries to filter out porn unless certain keywords are seen. "naked" will disable the filter, but "breasts" will not. Try doing an image search on each and see the difference.
      Or vulva vs vulva nude . In a google search, nude=porn.

              So how do we find "nude art" - I see about 50% art, and a lot of non-medical vulva close-ups. Enabling safe-seach does not help as "nude" is removed from your search terms.
          Easy! Add -porn. https://www.google.com/search?...

      Since google appears quite capable of separating nudes from porn, I don't see why they cannot offer it as an easy option in the search filter settings.
      It could even be made the default setting outside the US and middle east, where people (vocal minority?) are not too shocked at nudes when searching for gallery art or baby feeding :-)

    3. Re:Google Censorship by WinstonWolfIT · · Score: 3, Funny

      Ah, I was wondering where Britney Spears disappeared to.

  6. Duck Duck Go by Snotnose · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I switched to ddg a year or two back because I thought google had too much information on me. Maybe 2-3 times a week I need to revert to a google search, but ddg is fine for 99% of my searches.

    1. Re:Duck Duck Go by MooseTick · · Score: 2

      A browser fingerprint is not that perfect. I've done an in-depth analysis looking at 4.4 billion hits and user agents are not that unique. From that I found 4.3 million unique user agents. About 9% of the overall daily traffic contained user agents that were only seen from a unique IP address. So, there is less than a 1 in 10 chance you can be fingerprinted. And, if/when you ever update your OS or browser there is a good chance you will be lost in the crowd again.

      --
      Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
  7. Google Now by Phil+Urich · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Google is actually trying to do exactly this with Google Now; predictively presenting you with information you'd otherwise be searching for is simple yet fairly innovative, arguably, and they're positioning it as the next advance in search. One might argue about the philosophy or practicality of that, but they are at least explicitly trying to completely remake what a search engine/page is.

    It's certainly noticed that I go up to my local university campus in the afternoon on a specific day every week (although it doesn't know why...yet) and when I pop open the Search app it already shows at the top result, before I even have the chance to enter a search for bus and train schedules, a set of routes and times for transit up to campus. There as sense in which that's all just an obvious outgrowth of networked data, so perhaps calling it "extra-ordinarily innovative" is a stretch, but it's definitely something new for a search engine, and at least for me (again, your mileage may vary, especially vis-a-vis privacy concerns) is very convenient.

    --
    I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
  8. Yes, it is the cause by Phil+Urich · · Score: 3, Interesting

    TFA almost says as much, basically, with Google losing 2.1% share, Yahoo gaining 1.8%, Bing gaining 0.4% and all others combined losing 0.1%. It's a pretty dramatic win for Yahoo and considering it occurs right after Firefox switched, I think it's pretty clearly that.

    I had to help the non-technical staff around my office because they were utterly confused when suddenly they started getting Yahoo results rather than Google, and sites they used to find so easily weren't showing up in their searches. I too had thought it was only going to be for new installs; was a bit of a rude awakening.

    --
    I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
  9. If you had selected something... by jopsen · · Score: 5, Interesting

    leave the existing people alone, mmm'kay?

    If you had chosen a search engine it would have... Only the default changed.
    IMO, I don't see a way to do this painlessly...

    Either way, I've actually started using yahoo in Firefox, and barely notice the difference.

    1. Re:If you had selected something... by amiga3D · · Score: 2

      Ah...that's what happened. I wondered how it got screwed up. I noticed one day that my searches weren't working the way I expected and I noticed I was suddenly using yahoo. I couldn't figure what the hell had happened. I changed it back to google and it stayed there but I was wondering.

    2. Re:If you had selected something... by CyberInferno · · Score: 2

      Either way, I've actually started using yahoo in Firefox, and barely notice the difference.

      If you're using Yahoo and barely noticing a difference, you should switch it to Bing.

      Bing powers Yahoo's search engine, and you get Bing Rewards points which you can redeem for real things. Bing has bought me $5 Starbucks cards at least once a month since I started using the rewards program.

  10. I was just about to say that 2 -- firefox & ya by Paul+Fernhout · · Score: 2

    From November: http://tech.slashdot.org/story...
    "Google's 10-year run as Firefox's default search engine is over. Yahoo wants more search traffic, and a deal with Mozilla will bring it. In a major departure for both Mozilla and Yahoo, Firefox's default search engine is switching from Google to Yahoo in the United States."

    --
    A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
  11. Safe Search is never 100% off now by Phil+Urich · · Score: 4, Informative

    Turn off safe search?

    Actually, back in December 2012 Google tweaked things so that SafeSearch is, to a limited degree, always on; unless you explicitly search for "pornographic" materials they will generally filter out such results. As a Google rep put it in a statement to the press,

    We are not censoring any adult content, and want to show users exactly what they are looking for -- but we aim not to show sexually-explicit results unless a user is specifically searching for them.

    --
    I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
  12. Firefox made MICROSOFT BING the default. by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 2

    "Firefox makes Yahoo default"

    No, Firefox made Microsoft Bing search the default now: Advertise on the Yahoo Bing Network.

    That's giving some people the EEDIE Jeebies. Will Microsoft Embrace, Extend, then Demonically Implement Evil?

    If Microsoft stops providing Bing search, many people will desert Yahoo, stop seeing Yahoo ads, and Yahoo may slowly (quickly?) die.

  13. Google is blocked in China, Yahoo is not by Nocturrne · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Level playing field? I think not.

  14. More about DIE, the Demonic Insertion of Evil by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 2

    More about DIE, the possible Demonic Insertion of Evil:

    If Microsoft eventually stops providing Bing search to Yahoo, Yahoo would no longer pay Mozilla to trick Firefox users into searching with Bing by switching to Bing as the default search engine, instead of Google search.

    Then Mozilla would have less money to develop Firefox. Would Microsoft's Internet Explorer then become the most-used browser?

  15. Why bother searching. by sgt+scrub · · Score: 2

    Real masochists slam their keyboard into their face until the site they are trying to reach comes up.

    --
    Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
  16. 2009 results v 2014/5 by warp_kez · · Score: 2

    2009 Search: Blue tits = Cyanistes caeruleus
    2014 Search: Blue tits = girls of Avatar

  17. Re:Isn't Yahoo search just Google? by jeepies · · Score: 2

    Yahoo has "Powered by Bing" at the bottom of all their searches. It's not that hard to check.

  18. Microsoft pays people to use Bing! by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "... Bing Rewards points ..."

    Microsoft pays people to use Bing!

    So, any supposed "popularity" of Bing (But It's Not Good) is at least partly due to the fact that Microsoft PAYS people to use it.

    To me, that's another example of Microsoft DIE, the Dastardly Inclusion of Evil.

    Bing Rewards FAQ quote: "I'm not a US resident, can I still join Bing Rewards? No, only U.S. residents (50 U.S. States and D.C.) are eligible to join Bing Rewards. Also, you can't earn or redeem credits when you're traveling outside of the US."

    1. Re:Microsoft pays people to use Bing! by davydagger · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Microsoft knows how to market to one type of person and one type of person only, the corporate purchasing manager. Both at OEMs, and at large corporations. Thats the only type of person who likes microsoft. Everyone else uses their products begrungingly. The word "Windows" in correlation to phone operating system is such a toxic brand name, I am damn supprised MS has continued to make windows phones. You couldn't put a gun to someone's head and make them use a windows phone, of which they had a 5 year head start on blackberry and apple, and still lost.

      The only brand MS has that people don't hate is X-Box, and thats runs a giant loss for the company.