Google up, Microsoft down in November Web searches

Searches at Microsoft's Windows Live Search site dropped again in November from a year ago while Google's continued to rise, according to Nielsen Online figures released on Monday.

Searches at Windows Live Search fell 16.7 percent year-over-year, giving Microsoft 9.1 percent market share in the U.S. in November.

Google's searches rose 21.7 percent, for 64.1 percent market share, and Yahoo's searches dropped 1.4 percent from November 2007, for 16.1 percent share.

Total searches for the month exceeded 8 billion, up 9.6 percent from a year earlier.

In October, Google's searches rose 8.1 percent, giving it 61.2 percent share, while Yahoo's searches declined 12 percent and Microsoft's fell 19 percent year-over-year.

Top 10 search providers for November 2008, ranked by searches (U.S.)

(Credit: Nielsen Online)

[t8]

Google is synonymous with the Internet.
Microsoft isn't because it has spent too much of its resources on Windows and other declining products.
The future is the Internet and hence the future belongs to Google if they don't drop the ball.

[lunixer]

I thought that google had much more than that. I thought that google had market share in the 90% or so.

[loose_screw]

MSN, Live...Microsoft is not doing too well outside its core product lines (Windows, Office) and the rumors about pending massive layoffs don't help to inspire confidence in Microsoft. They're losing market share to Apple, Google, and others. I really wish Microsoft would actually innovate instead of copying their competitors and then trying to squeeze them out of the marketplace by underpricing them. That may have worked with smaller competitors, but it doesn't fly when you're dealing with industry giants like Apple and Google.

Microsoft sometimes reminds me of Sony, focusing their efforts trying to reinvent the wheel (coming up with Silverlight and trying to persuade people from the ubiquitous Flash, developing .Net & ActiveX instead of supporting Java, etc.) rather than focusing on what they are truly good at. I guess I'm not surprised to hear of Microsoft's increasing troubles.

[Sumatra-Bosch]

Wow, another home run for the Boy Fuhrer from Duncan Hines! Maybe he can get his old gig back screwing up the brownie mix at the DH.

[Michael_Martinez]

Number of searches performed is a meaningless and useless relic for measuring search market share. People use way more informational queries at Google than at other search engines. They are looking for their own names, tracking where their Web sites rank in various queries, performing phone book searches, product price searches, local business searches, and other queries that don't result in click-throughs to other sites.

Quantcast estimates that 100,000,000 people used Microsoft search destinations (live.com and search.msn.com) in November, whereas only Google served more visitors. Throughout 2008 Microsoft has increased its search audience share while Google has lost search audience share (Yahoo! has lost even more search audience share).

As long as Microsoft doesn't shift any resources away from its current search services it should be able to compete head-to-head with Google starting in 2009.