Google grabbed 72.17 percent of U.S. search market in
May, up from 71.4 percent in April for almost a 1 percent gain, according to
new stats from HitWise.
Google's gain came at the expense of Yahoo and Microsoft
Bing. Yahoo dropped from 14.96 percent in April to 14.43 percent in May, while
Bing fell from 9.43 percent the prior month to 9.23 percent.
The numbers stand out against the May search statistics
from comScore, which quantified the search market shares using two data sets.
In one set where comScore counted contextual shortcuts
and slideshows from Yahoo and Bing, Google's search share at 63.7 percent,
Yahoo commanded 18.3 percent and Bing nabbed 12.1 percent.
Subtracting the shortcuts and slideshows, Google grabbed
66.4 percent of the search engine market through May, its greatest share ever. Yahoo's
search share for the month was 16.6 percent, with Bing grabbing 10.8 percent.
These stats are forcing financial analysts and other
industry insiders to question comScore's metrics. Recognizing this, ComScore is
making changes to its methodology for classifying and counting Web searches.
In the meantime, HitWise, which looked at a sample of 10
million Internet users, may be the go-to stat machine for search, particularly
for those believing Google's market share is consistently in the 70 percent
range.
The researcher also said Google delivered the most searches
to the health, automotive, shopping and travel vertical industries.
Yahoo saw
gains in the automotive and shopping markets. Bing, which places a heavy
emphasis on shopping and commerce saw triple-digit growth in searches for health
and shopping.
Google in May
revamped its search user interface to include more refinements for users
looking to drill down into search results. Google followed that up in June with roll-out of its Caffeine search indexing system.
That means Google has
also completed a total overhaul of its search engine in 2010, showing
that it is determined not to give up the keys to its search
kingdom.
Indexing & Search Engine News & Reviews 
