 |
After dropping slightly in July, Google’s search US share was up slightly in August:
Google Inc.’s share of the 6.5 billion Web searches conducted in the U.S. in August inched up, reversing a loss the company saw in July, according to reports from comScore Networks and Nielsen NetRatings released Tuesday.
Data from comScore, an Internet research company, showed Google held a 44.1 percent share of U.S. search queries, up from 43.7 percent in July. Nielsen NetRatings estimated the share at 50.2 percent, up from 49.2 percent last month.
Microsoft is reportedly in 3rd place as usual and comScore has them at %12.5 down from %12.8 in July and %15.8 a year ago, while I have yet to see the Nielsen details for Microsoft. As always, we’re talking small changes in the monthly numbers, but if you would like to try to discern longer term trends, Danny Sullivan has the Nielsen numbers graphed for 19 months up through July at SearchEngineWatch.
Market Watch says Windows Live Search has already launched:
Microsoft Corp. late Monday said it officially launched its Live Search service, the successor to the Web-search tool on its MSN portal. The company, which had previously released Live Search in test form, said the new service is available in 47 markets globally, with users able to use its Live.com Web site for personalized Internet searches. Microsoft, of Redmond, Wash., additionally said its Live Search Local service is now available in the United States and the U.K.
Frankly, it’s hard to tell because of the ubiquitous beta logo on the live.com header and the AP says the official launch isn’t until tomorrow, but presumably it’s imminent.
Update: Press release:
Microsoft Corp. today announced the release from beta of Live Search and of Live.com in 47 markets worldwide, and final availability of Live Local Search in the U.K. and the U.S. Microsoft also announced that Live Search will now power the Web search capability on MSN®, the company’s media and entertainment portal, attracting more than 465 million unique users worldwide per month.
…
Additional details can be found on the Live Search and Live Local Search team blogs at http://livesearch.spaces.live.com and http://virtualearth.spaces.live.com, respectively.
At the moment, there’s zip at the blogs and MSN is still showing the old MSN Search.
Update 2: Mary Jo Foley reports that the transition from beta to final will take place gradually through the 14th.
Tool Generates Fake Searches for Privacy:
A new tool seeks to make your searches more private by hiding them in plain sight. TrackMeNot periodically sends fake, innocuous queries to search engines, making it harder for someone to glean your actual search habits by reviewing the companies’ logs that contain your queries.
The AOL release of barely veiled user search data is the proximate cause, but think about this a minute – each user of this program is going to be generating a lot of fake searches.
The tool, developed by two researchers at New York University, sends random searches, such as “boston clock” and “croissant,” to the four largest search engines — Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp.’s MSN and AOL. A fake search is made every 12 seconds under default configurations; the tool can generate millions of unique queries from its list, and users can add their own.
A whole lot of fake searches! Aside from the added traffic on the engines, if the searches are evenly distributed, I guess we can expect Google’s share to drop and MSN’s to rise. Then there’s what it does to keyword popularity and search ad pricing. The only saving grace is that there aren’t likely to be that many folks who want to have their browser chugging away in the background generating 300 searches an hour. Anyhow, if you want to do your part to increase entropy, TrackMeNot is available here, but requires Firefox.
Much like last week’s report from comScore, Nielsen/NetRatings is reporting that Google’s US search share dropped slightly in July:
Nielsen/NetRatings, an Internet research firm, said Monday Google handled 49.2 percent of the country’s total — about 2.8 billion searches — a slight drop from its 49.4 percent share in June.
…
Nielsen/NetRatings reported a slight gain in July for the No. 2 search provider, Yahoo Inc., which inched up to 23.8 percent from 23 percent last month.Microsoft Corp.’s MSN and Time Warner Inc.’s AOL dropped less than a percent, while IAC/Interactive Corp.’s Ask.com edged up under one percent.
Update: Gabriel Madway has more at MarketWatch. Nielsen’s numbers indicate total US searchs were up by 35% from a year ago and while Google and Yahoo more or less kept pace with the growth, MSN Search was down 3% from last year.
