Google's U.S. search share edges upward
The search powerhouse was a little more powerful in October, Nielsen's statistics show, but search overall dipped in October in the U.S.
- Shankland covered the tech industry for more than 25 years and was a science writer for five years before that. He has deep expertise in microprocessors, digital photography, computer hardware and software, internet standards, web technology, and more.
United States Internet users conducted 2 percent fewer searches in October 2008 than the year earlier, but used Google more often for those searches, according to data Nielsen Online released Tuesday.
The total number of searches decreased 2 percent to 7.78 billion for the U.S., Nielsen said. Google's searches increased 8.1 percent to 4.76 billion for the month, giving the company a 61.2 percent share of the market.
Search is a profitable business for Google, which shows textual advertisements based on the search query terms, and Yahoo and Microsoft in particular are trying to match as closely as possible. Those companies didn't fare as well, though.
Yahoo's searches declined 12 percent annually to 1.31 billion and Microsoft's declined 19 percent annually to 89 million, Nielsen said.
In September, all three of the major search companies had more search queries in the U.S, according to Nielsen. For that month, Google had 4.83 billion searches, Yahoo 1.46 billion searches, and Microsoft 95 million searches. The total that month was 8.09 billion.