Google U.S. share up in December

Posted by Erina Lin on January 13, 2009 at 8:20 PM

Google widened its U.S. usage share of online search in December 2008, up to 72.1 percent of all queries from 65.9 percent in the same period one year ago, according to Hitwise.

Other three key search engine players all lost in the overall share. Yahoo! came in second after a distant gap, with a 17.8 percent share, down from 20.9 percent in December 2007. Microsoft came next with 5.6 percent, down from 7 percent, while Ask.com reported a share of 3.4 percent, down from 4.1 percent, NYTimes reported.

For the entire year of 2008, Google grabbed 69.5 percent of all search queries in the United States. Yahoo! had 19.2 percent, while Microsoft had 5.9 percent and Ask.com had 3.2 percent.

Google's unbeatable leading status among search engine users directly reflects on its dominant position in search advertising, the biggest chunk of online advertising, NYTimes.com reported.

According to a study published by IDC in December, search advertising made up 51 percent of all U.S. Internet ad spending in the third quarter of 2008. Google owned 54 percent of search-ad spending, while Yahoo! had 12.6 percent.

Of the total U.S. online ad spending, Google owned a 35 percent share, followed by Yahoo! with 14 percent, according to IDC, NYTimes.com reported.