Tuesday, September 13, 2011
SAN FRANCISCO: Google Inc's
share of online searches in the US slipped during August from July, while
rivals Yahoo Inc and Microsoft Corp
gained, according to research firm ComScore Inc. Google had 64.8 per cent of US searches last month, down from 65.1 per cent in July, according to ComScore. It was the second-straight month of decline, following no change in June. Yahoo climbed to 16.3 per cent, up from 16.1 per cent, rising for a second month in a row. Microsoft, meanwhile, increased to 14.7 per cent from 14.4 per cent.
Yahoo and Microsoft teamed up last year in thesearch market, providing a bigger threat to Google's dominance. Under the companies' 10-year agreement, Microsoft handles Internet queries for Yahoo pages. Microsoft, which released a revamped search engine named Bing in 2009, also has rolled out a multimedia advertising campaign to attract users and is bolstering results by displaying data from Facebook Inc.
Google, based in Mountain View, California, continues to enhance its own features. In June, the company unveiled a feature called Instant Pages that gives users of its Chrome browser quicker connections from links on query results. The change is designed to cut 2 to 5 seconds from the process. Google got most of its $29.3 billion in revenue last year from search advertising.
