Search wars: Yahoo, Google inch up in May, Microsoft slides

IDG News Service — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 14:46:12 -0700

More bad news for Microsoft after the Yahoo deal breakdown: according to comScore's analysis of May search traffic, Redmond's share of the search market dropped from April, even as Google and Yahoo edged up.

Google dominates with 61.8 percent of the market, according to comScore's data, a 0.2 percentage point increase from April's 61.6 percent. The beleaguered Yahoo comes in second with 20.6 percent, also a 0.2 point improvement over April's numbers.

Microsoft comes in a distant third with 8.5 percent, 0.6 percentage points down from 9.1 percent in April. Also-ran's AOL and Ask each have less than 1/20th of the search market, with 4.5 percent for both in May. That represents a 0.1 point drop for AOL compared with April, and a 0.2 point bump for Ask.

The small movements with these monthly numbers don't tell the full story, though. For that take a look at comScore year-over-year data posted by TechCrunch and Silicon Alley Insider. You'll note that compared to May of last year, Google's market share has skyrocketed by 28.4 percent, Yahoo dipped by 2 percent, and Microsoft notched up 2.8 percent.

That translates to Google devouring the lion's share of the 16.4 percent overall increase in searches compared to last year.