Microsoft Gets a Ray of Light through Google's Shadow

Yes, it must be the spring, because Microsoft has caught a ray of light through Google's shadow. According to Internet metrics company comScore Microsoft has advanced a few percentages in the search engine ranking in March 2007. comScore has made available the data for the past months revealing the evolution of the major players on the US search engine market. Microsoft has continued the ascendant trend debuted at the turn of the year.

The combined results for MSN and Live Search have managed to push up the overall results of Microsoft search almost half a point in March. comScore revealed that while the Redmond Company accounted for 10.5% of the search market in February 2007, it has grown to 10.9% in March.

"In March 2007, Google Sites captured 48.3 percent of the U.S. search market, gaining 0.2 share points from the previous month. Yahoo! Sites maintained its second place ranking with 27.5 percent of U.S. searches, followed by Microsoft Sites (10.9 percent), Ask Network (5.2 percent) and Time Warner Network (5.0 percent)," comScore informed.

These percentages correspond to shares out of the total of 7.3 billion online searches; comScore also pointed out that the actual volume of searches has increased over 6% in March (,) compared to the previous month. Microsoft's jump comes in the context of the availability of Windows Vista and Internet Explorer 7, both featuring Live Search as the default search engine.

"Google Sites led the pack with 3.5 billion search queries performed, followed by Yahoo Sites (2.0 billion), Microsoft Sites (798 million), Ask Network (379 million), and Time Warner Network (368 million)," comScore added.