Nielsen: Google, Yahoo, Losing Search Share To MSN. (Not A Typo)

Source: http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/01/nielsen-google-yahoo-losing-search-share-to-msn-not-a-typo.html

Interesting news to dump late on Friday: Nielsen's newest search share rankings show Microsoft gaining at Google and Yahoo. Google and YHOO saw their share drop 1.4% and .2%, respectively, while MSFT jumped 1.8% between Nov. and Dec., 2007.

All of this is newsworthy, because we've become used to watching GOOG's search share march inexorably upwards, while its competitors stumble. But it in addition to the usual caveats -- this is one research firm, and one set of month-to-month data -- the Nielsen data comes with a new asterisk.

Last fall, the firm made changes to its tracking panel, which it says resulted in "more granular reporting, increased accuracy, an expanded Internet universe and more advanced tracking." That sounds great, but the downside is that the company says it means we can't compare its pre-Nov. 2007 data with anything it's done before. Which essentially means that if we want meaningful trend data from Nielsen, we're going to have wait several months.

In the meantime, go ahead and enjoy these apples-to-apples comparisons, for what they're worth.

+----------+-----------+----------+-----------+-----------+----------+-----------+ |          |           DECEMBER 2007          |           NOVEMBER 2007          | +----------+-----------+----------+-----------+-----------+----------+-----------+ | Provider |  Searches | Share of | Searches/ |  Searches | Share of | Searches/ | |          |     (000) | Searches | Searcher  |    (000)  | Searches | Searcher  | +----------+-----------+----------+-----------+-----------+----------+-----------+ | Google   | 4,062,536 |    56.3% |      37.9 | 4,253,794 |    57.7% |      40.8 | | Yahoo!   | 1,273,688 |    17.7% |      22.4 | 1,317,919 |    17.9% |      23.7 | | MSN/Live |   995,899 |    13.8% |      31.7 |   880,550 |    12.0% |      27.8 | | AOL      |   339,761 |     4.7% |      15.2 |   332,385 |     4.5% |      14.7 | | Ask.com  |   159,529 |     2.2% |      10.0 |   195,848 |     2.7% |      10.5 | | My Web   |    70,630 |     1.0% |      10.4 |    87,001 |     1.2% |      12.6 | | Comcast  |    34,715 |     0.5% |      10.1 |    39,257 |     0.5% |      10.4 | | NexTag   |    29,019 |     0.4% |       2.9 |    27,714 |     0.4% |       3.1 | | AT&T     |    25,159 |     0.3% |       9.1 |    29,244 |     0.4% |       9.2 | +----------+-----------+----------+-----------+-----------+----------+-----------+ Source: Nielsen Online, MegaView Search