Search engine popularity - July 2006

The latest monthly figures from Comcast show that 43.7% of the 6.3 billion searches in the US in June were done on Google. However Google's share has declined by 1% from last month, lost to AOL and Ask. This ends Google's 11 month run of gaining share.

Overall though the other main engines have lost 'share of search' to Google by a few percentage points over the last year as you can see in the table.

The figures come from a panel of 2 million consumers worldwide whose searches are tracked by Comscore. So their habits may be influenced by their knowledge of being watched. Even so, we think the trend is valid.

Significance

Searching is becoming more and more the ingrained in the habits of internet users. As the main search engines compete for users by offering better relevancy, convenience and tools, advertising on search engines or optimising webpages is an essential activity.