Again we’re talking a fraction of a point, but according to a write up today in MediaPost (reg. req’d) Nielsen data seem to confirm a slight gain in Yahoo!’s search share (almost a point) vs. a holding pattern for Google:
Nielsen//Netratings reported Monday that Google accounted for 49.2 percent of all search activity last month–nearly flat from June’s 49.2 percent…Nielsen//NetRatings also reported that Yahoo Search garnered 23.8 percent of July’s search activity, up from June’s 23 percent; MSN accounted for 9.6 percent of July searches, down from 10.3 percent in June.
As Danny Sullivan points out in his post from yesterday, one has to look at longer term trends and consensus figures from multiple providers. We’ll see what Hitwise has to say about this now.
As I wrote that, I saw that Bill Tancer had in fact posted on the subject. What Hitwise data show is something similar: a flattening for Google and fractional growth for Yahoo! (although they report a near 60% market share for Google):
Tancer speculates that Hitwise’s 60% market share figure for Google may reflect “saturation” and that the dip in the numbers above may be a “seasonal fluctuation.” We’ll see next month if this “trend” continues.
