Marketing Pilgrim

Nielsen//NetRatings reported a week ago that Google had more than 50% of the search market share in December 2006. The data for the top three (compared with comScore Networks’ data from the same period, released Jan 15):

Provider	Searches (000)	Share of Searches	comScore Queries/Share
Google Search	3,035,617	50.8%	3.2 billion / 43.7%
Yahoo! Search	1,412,904	23.6%	1.9 billion / 28.5%
MSN/Windows Live Search	499,946	8.4%	713 million / 10.5%

Clearly, and unsurprisingly, comScore and Nielsen differ on their estimations of each search engine’s popularity. comScore’s stats give MSN and Yahoo a better projection than Nielsen.

Inside Google at the Blog News Channel noted that Yahoo! is growing at a faster rate than Google (Yahoo’s growth rate: 30.1%; Google’s: 22.6%). Of course, it’s easy to grow faster when you’re half as big.

The biggest loser here is MSN, with a negative growth rate according to Nielsen (-9.7%) in spite of performing 1/6 as many searches as Google.

Google boasted another win in the UK. comScore Networks reported yesterday:

Switching places once again with Microsoft Sites, Google Sites narrowly assumed the Number One position in December with 25.8 million visitors (just 30,000 more than Microsoft).

The top five properties among UK Internet users age 15+ from comScore’s World Metrix:

Property	Nov 2006 Visitors (000)	Dec 2006 Visitors (000)	% change
Google sites	24,911	25,751	3%
Microsoft sites	24,976	25,721	3%
eBay	20,686	20,921	1%
Yahoo! sites	19,862	20,171	2%
BBC sites	16,386	16,665	2%

Clearly, MSN and Google are neck-and-neck in the UK. Yahoo! lags behind eBay in the UK. After the top five, Amazon, Time Warner, Ask, Fox Interactive (parent company of MySpace), and Home Retail Group (formerly GUS) round out the top ten.

Would Nielsen find that Google and MSN are reversed? Which company, if any, do you believe?

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