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GOOGLE'S DOMINATION OF INTERNET SEARCH GROWS,
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| NEW YORK, August 10, 2005 — In the 15 months since Google's IPO, industry observers have pondered whether the search giant could hold onto its loyal audience in the face of increasingly aggressive competition. Despite MSN's vow to own search, and major advancements by Yahoo! and Ask Jeeves, Google is still the dominant consumer search engine by far. New data from Hitwise, the world's leading online competitive intelligence service, show that the top three search engines - Google, Yahoo Search and MSN Search - accounted for 93.5 percent of U.S. Internet searches across major engines in July 2005. Amidst that triumvirate's consolidation of search power still lies Google, which claimed 59.2 percent of searches across all major engines in the same month, a 14 percent increase in share versus year-ago. Yahoo! Search and MSN search respectively captured 28.8 percent and 5.5 percent share of searches in July 2005. Google's growth is noteworthy considering that, unlike its competitors, it does not have a stand-alone portal to drive traffic to the service. Yahoo! Search received 73 percent of its visits directly from its main portal sites (www.yahoo.com and my.yahoo.com) in July 2005, while MSN Search received 61 percent of its visits from its portal sites (www.msn.com, my.msn.com and dellnet.msn.com). "Google continues to demonstrate the value of effective Internet search on its own, irrespective of any connection to a general Internet portal," said Bill Tancer, General Manager, Worldwide Research, Hitwise. "Clearly the next big challenge for Google will be the arrival of Microsoft's new operating system, "Vista," which is said to have far tighter search integration." |
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Local Search
While Google may dominate general search, attention is directing toward local search, and Yahoo! is the leading service in that arena. Visits to Yahoo! Local (local.yahoo.com) were 4.4 times greater than visits to Google Local (local.google.com) in July 2005. However, Google Local's market share increased 61 percent between February 2005 and July 2005, while Yahoo! Local grew 14 percent. Google Local's catch-up is occurring amidst the growth of Google Maps (maps.google.com), which has quickly grown to become the third ranked site in the Hitwise Travel - Maps category in July 2005. Maps have proved important to local search users, as 17 percent of Yahoo! Local's visitors went directly onto Yahoo! Maps in July 2005. |
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Contact: For media inquiries or to schedule an analyst interview, please contact Lizzie Babarczy: press@hitwise.com (212) 380 2910. About Hitwise: Hitwise is the world's leading online competitive intelligence service. Each day, Hitwise monitors how more than 25 million Internet users interact with over 500,000 websites across 160 industry categories. By monitoring more people, more websites, more often, Hitwise provides marketers with timely and actionable marketing insights on how their online presence compares to competitive websites. Companies use this information to maximize the return on their online investment, in efforts such as search marketing, affiliate programs, online advertising, visitor segmentation, content development and lead generation. Hitwise collects Internet usage information via a combination of ISP data partnerships and opt-in mega panels, and complies with local and international privacy legislation as audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Founded in 1997, Hitwise is a privately held company, headquartered in New York City and operates in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. More information about Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.com |
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