Majority of Online Searchers Use Multiple Search Engines, Pointing to a Fluid Competitive Landscape, According to Nielsen//NetRatings Monday February 28, 8:30 am ET Nielsen//NetRatings MegaView Search Service Releases Latest Online Search Engine Share: Google Secures 47 Percent of All Searches; Yahoo!
NEW YORK, Feb. 28 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Nielsen//NetRatings, the global standard for Internet audience measurement and analysis, reported today that a minority of searchers exclusively use only one of the top three search engines-Google Search, Yahoo!
According to the latest custom research from Nielsen//NetRatings MegaView Search, 58 percent of Google searchers also visited at least one of the other top two search engines, MSN Search and Yahoo!
Search, showing that even though Google's market share is dominant today, there is significant opportunity for its competitors to grow their share (see Table 1).
"While it shouldn't surprise anyone that Google is the search engine to beat, it is critical that all of the major search players, including Google, recognize that they exclusively own only a minority of their users," said Ken Cassar, director, strategic analysis, Nielsen//NetRatings.
"This highlights an opportunity and a threat to all of the established players in the market, and underscores the importance of continued innovation in a highly competitive market that is anything but mature."
Note: Unique searchers are the total number of unique visitors that have engaged in search activity at the search engine during the specified reporting period, excluding internal site searches.
Drilling down into the user overlap at the top three search engines, Nielsen//NetRatings found that Google users showed a higher degree of loyalty than its competitors.
Nielsen//NetRatings also reported today the latest rankings of online search engines based on the number of search query volume.