Google Gains Search Market Share

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April 18, 2006 (4:28 PM EDT)

By Antone Gonsalves , TechWeb Technology News

Google Inc. in March increased its share of the U.S. search market for the eighth consecutive month, a Web metrics firm said.

Out of the top five search engines, Google and Ask Network, formerly known as Ask Jeeves, were the only companies to record a share increase, ComScore Networks said. Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp.'s MSN and the Time Warner Network posted a decline.

For the month, Google's share rose 6.3 percent to capture 42.7 percent of the 6.4 billion searches conducted online, ComScore said late Monday. Yahoo's share fell 2.6 percent to 28 percent, MSN's dropped 3.3 percent to 13.2 percent, and Time Warner dipped 1.4 percent to 7.6 percent. Ask was up 0.4 percent to 5.9 percent.

Americans conducted 15 percent more searches in March than in the same month a year ago, and 10 percent more than in February. The month-to-month increase marked the largest gain over the last 12 months.

Google and Yahoo continued to dominate searches that started from toolbars, accounting for more than 95 percent of those searches, ComScore said. Separately, Google captured 48.9 percent of the toolbar search market, and Yahoo 46.5 percent.