14 DAY TRIAL // The latest search engine data from comScore has been released and, for anyone following the market, there won't be any surprises. Google continues to dominate, though it loses a bit more market share, while Yahoo and Bing see some minor improvements.
"Google Sites led the U.S. explicit core search market in August with 65.4 percent market share, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 17.4 percent (up 0.3 percentage points) and Microsoft sites with 11.1 percent (up 0.1 percentage points). Ask Network captured 3.8 percent of explicit core searches, followed by AOL LLC with 2.3 percent," comScore said.
The numbers are on par with what we've been seeing for the past months. The data for August is adjusted to account only for searches initiated specifically by the user, the second month this has been the case.
Google has been on a somewhat of a downward trend, but its size along with the very small difference mean that it has nothing to worry about. Google had 66.2 percent market share in June and is now at 65.4 percent.
Both Bing and Yahoo gained a bit more market share, continuing the trend. Yahoo added 0.3 percent, on top of the 0.4 percent it gained in the last month. Bing stood flat in the previous month and now gained 0.1 percent.
"Google Sites ranked first with 10.3 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites in second with 2.7 billion (up 3 percent) and Microsoft Sites in third with 1.7 billion (up 2 percent)," comScore commented about search volume.
Interestingly, comScore also provides the numbers which include contextual and other types of searches not counted in the Explicit Core Search. While Google had the same number of searches, Yahoo saw 3.6 billion searches and Microsoft sites 2.2 billion.