The US Search Engine rankings for September have been released and, as expected, Google are still firmly at the top with an estimated 54 percent of the market share. But the surprising news was the impressive growth of Microsoft Live.
According to Nielsen Online, Microsoft's MSN/Windows Live Search achieved 71.5 percent growth in just one year, with an estimated 890.7 million search queries in September alone.
While Live Search is still ranked third - and they are a long way from Google's impressive command of the market - it seems that the improvements Live Search have implemented in the last year have made a difference to searchers.
Yahoo! retains its spot as the second most popular search engine, but it's a distant second with a 19.5% share in Nielsen Online's rankings. Microsoft Corp.'s MSN/Windows Live Search came in third with a 12% share and AOL (6%) and Ask.com (2.2%) rounded out the top five search engines. The battle for supremacy amongst search engines is fierce as sites fight to provide the best services - and the main winners are the consumers.
While Yahoo remains Google's closest competitor, it seems that Microsoft Live is determined to catch up. Whether their improvements, such as Auto Spell Correction and Stemming as announced on 24th of October, are strong enough to provide a credible threat to search-giants Google remains to be seen.
