22 August 2006 | Author: Kirsten Spence

Hold the phone! – Yahoo! is gaining on Google

The search engine market share statistics have pretty much always seemed to heavily fall in Google's favour, with 11 consecutive months of growth in the past year. But not any more it seems, as the giant has fallen a mighty 1% on growth from the past month.

Well, perhaps 1% doesn't sound a big deal in terms of, say, discounts in your favourite store, but for Google that's still plenty of numbers coming after the dollar sign.

Yahoo! has been posting consecutive monthly gains and are now standing at 28.8 percent of the US search market for the month of July 2006. This has largely been due to their continued efforts to focus on their new advertising and search platform, whereas Google it seems is constantly trying to add to their already extensive 'Beta' range of services.

Google has in the past stated that they want to get back to their roots and re-focus on their search business, but they still continue to churn out new and innovative features. This is definitely not a bad thing and being the industry forerunner they are expected to be on top of innovations in the search market as well as the online market generally.

This is one of the things Microsoft failed to foresee and as such the company languishes in 3rd place well behind both Yahoo! and Google. MSN also posted the largest loss of market share for July 2006 compared to this time last year out of all the major search engines, despite recently announcing major changes to their advertising platform. This, however, did not stop interest in the company with their share prices up 0.62% on Monday this week.

Yahoo! has been busy in the meantime with its acquisition of the del.icio.us social search site which has seen huge traffic gains in recent times since the advent of its new owners. Social search is on the tip of all our tongues here at bigmouthmedia, as you can probably tell from our recent newsletters!

In direct contrast to MSN, it seems that despite all the good news Yahoo! investors were still not impressed and as such shares in the search engine dropped 2.85%.

Meanwhile, the ComScore Network, who provide online statistical information, have said that the overall searches made in the US were down 2% from the previous month. However, let's put that in context: a 2% seasonal dip in many other industries would considered paltry; traditional high street retailers would call a mere 2% drop in shoppers a summer bonanza.

Just one more way the online world is breaking all the traditional rules...

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