Google and Bing Market shares rise, Yahoo shares fall

The September numbers released by ComScore last Wednesday show Google in the lead, after several months of slight decline. Bing follows with a slight incline and Yahoo, after months of rising numbers, falls after its transition to Microsoft’s algorithms.

UBS, being the first to report this data, does not impute these numbers to Yahoo’s alliance with Bing or Google Instant, but instead attributes Google’s boost to college students going back to school.

Google is gaining share, up 0.7 points since August, representing 66.1 percent of the market. Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, rose 0.7 points to 11.2 percent of “explicit” searches.

September 2010 Search Share

• Google: 66.1% (up 0.7 from 65.4%)
• Yahoo: 16.7% (0.7 less than 17.4%)
• Bing: 11.2% (up 0.1 from 11.1%)
• Ask: 3.7% (up 0.1 from 3.8%)
• AOL: 2.3% (no change)

Search data is made up of “explicit basic” searches or search keywords entered manually by users on a web page. ComScore takes into account all the domains of a search engine. For example, Google data includes search results from YouTube, Google News, Google Images, etc.

Instant Google Search

Results from Google Instant Search are not included in the report, according to ComScore. Instant Search, launched earlier this month, displays search results on search engine results pages before the user hits the enter key. Matching results appear as long as you type a search keyword.

Instant Search addresses Google’s key insights into Internet user behavior. People write slow and read fast. Meaning: Users scan a results page as they type.

The biggest change is that users don’t have to finish typing their keywords or hit the “search” button, as the right content appears much faster. The search can be changed as the user types, to match what they are looking for.

ComScore only counts the final result of the instant search: “To account for Google Instant, comScore has again changed the methodology. “Explicit parent search” essentially reverses instant search and only logs a search when the user clicks on a link or press the enter button. “Main search” also logs a search when users pause for 3 seconds to contemplate the suggested instant results.”

Yahoo–Bing Alliance

The search agreement between Yahoo and Bing, introduced in February of this year, was recently completed. ComScore accounts for Yahoo searches performed by the Bing search engine. The alliance covers Yahoo’s transition to Bing’s search algorithms and “powered by” search. ComScore also counters attempts by Microsoft and Yahoo to treat slideshows as search results.

Questioned search data

Yahoo argues that Google’s relatively steep increase in market share is due to instant search. Shashi Seth, Yahoo’s SVP of Search and Marketplace, mentions in his blog post: “Looking at the comScore report, it seems to me that the majority of Google’s query growth in September (a month in which Google Instant was active for 20 days) came from precisely these kinds of interactions.”

Google claims that users scan a page in about 300 milliseconds between keystrokes to type, but only 30 milliseconds to view search engine results page (SERP) results. If comScore counts search results after a 3-second pause, that means a user might have scanned a results page 10 times before deciding which link to click.