Google continues to dominate the search market in 2009. The latest research from leading industry analysts comScore shows that the company ended 2008 with a 63.5 per cent share of the search engine market. Even more impressively, Google accounted for 90 per cent of the growth in search volume over the course of the year.
The company’s fortunes have been on an upward trajectory over the past five years. As recently as 2006, their market share was a full 20 per cent lower than what it is today (comScore), and with their closest rival Yahoo experiencing difficulties (including a change of CEO and repeated buyout overtures from Microsoft) it is little wonder that Google’s main competitor has slipped back somewhat in their share of the market.
Google’s dominance of the search engine market extends into the mindset of internet users. With the company’s name having passed into everyday language as a verb (meaning ‘to search the internet’) it is unsurprising that Google is most people’s search engine of choice.
The chart above shows the current carve-up of the search market, with market leader Google taking a massive 63.5 per cent share of all queries. Their closest rival is Yahoo, but with less than a quarter share (20.5 per cent) of the market, Carol Bartz’s company has a lot of catching up to do. Microsoft, so dominant in the PC market, is a relatively minor player in search, with just an 8.3 per cent share of the market. The remaining figure is divided between search stalwarts Ask and AOL, who hold 3.8 and 3.7 per cent of the market respectively.