14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft's Live Search is, at the end of 2007, nothing more than a satellite on Google's orbit. This while the Mountain View-based company has positioned itself at the center of the search engine market. In the fall and winter of 2007, Microsoft introduced the first major update to Live Search since the service debuted back in 2007. But, taking Live Search to version 2.0 is a move that still has to pay off for the Redmond company, as a few months later the overall impact has been only superficial. Having poured steroids into all aspects of Live Search from vertical searches to query relevance, Microsoft has offered proof that it has indeed increased the pace in the race with Google and Yahoo, but at the same time the efforts are made to catch up with the two Internet giants. And neither Google nor Yahoo are keeping still.
"Among core search engines in November 2007, Google Sites remained the top search property with 5.9 billion core searches conducted, representing a 58.6-% share of the search market", revealed comScore. "In November, Google Sites share of core searches stood at 58.6 %, virtually the same level as in October. Yahoo! Sites ranked second with 22.4 %, followed by Microsoft Sites (9.8 %), Ask Network (4.6 %) and Time Warner Network (4.5 %), which had the largest share point gain during the month (up 0.3 points)."
Stagnation is by no means a good sign for Microsoft. The fact of the matter is that the Redmond company's share of the search engine market has been oscillating across 2007, but with an overall descendant trajectory. And when it comes down to grabbing the largest audience, Google has slowly kept pushing Microsoft to the periphery of the search market. The latest statistics published by comScore are focused on the U.S.; globally, Microsoft is doing much worse as it is only the forth behind Google, Yahoo and the Chinese Baidu.com.
"Americans conducted 10 billion searches at the core search engines, representing a 5-percent decline versus October. With one less day in the month, November can be a seasonally softer month for search activity. Nearly 5.9 billion core searches were conducted at Google Sites during the month, while Yahoo! Sites recorded 2.2 billion", comScore added.