According to the latest data from Hitwise, Google gained yet another percentage point on its biggest competitors last month and now accounts for more than 69.17% of U.S. searches. In the U.K. and Australia, Google’s market share has climbed above 87%. This increase comes at a time when, according to Hitwise, more and more Internet users are also relying on search to navigate to key industry categories.
As Google gained market share, every other major player lost a considerable amount of users over the last year, with the most dramatic loss being MSN’s search share dropping from 14.68% to 6.72% in Australia. At the same time, Google gained 10% in both Britain and Australia.
Update: The original graph displayed information from May 2007 instead of June 2007. We have replaced it with the updated version below.
Besides Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Ask, Hitwise also looked at 42 smaller search engines. Overall, they accounted for only 1.70% of the U.S. market – a number that demonstrates the staggering uphill battle new entrants in the search business have to face.
These latest numbers also once again stress that, at least in the U.S., a combination of Microsoft’s and Yahoo’s search would create a relatively large competitor to Google. However, looking at the current trends – there is also a good chance that Google would just continue to grow while taking away market share from a combined Microhoo search engine.
