Google Retains Search Lead; MSN, Yahoo Grow

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has held its lead in search, while MSN and Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) increased search traffic in December.

Google accounted for 72.07pc of all U.S. searches last month, while Yahoo accounted for 17.79pc of all U.S. searches and MSN took 5.56pc of the share, according to figures released by Hitwise Monday. Ask.com accounted for 3.15pc of U.S. searches in December, while 44 other search engines, together, accounted for just 1.42pc.

MSN increased its share by 2pc in the four weeks ending Dec. 27 compared to the four weeks ending Nov. 29, marking its fifth consecutive month of growth, according to figures from Hitwise. Yahoo grew its share by 1pc from November to December, according to a sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users.

For all of 2008, Google accounted for 69.48pc of all U.S. searches. That's up 8pc from 2007. A comparison of December 2007 to December 2008 is even more impressive, with Google growing 14pc year-over-year.

Ask.com grew 1pc from 2007 to 2008, according to Hitwise.

Hitwise reported that search engines continue to dominate as key navigation tools Internet users rely on for information in key industry categories, such as business and finance, sports, online video, and social networking. Hitwise found that the share of traffic that search engines drove to those categories increased from December 2007 to December 2008 by double-digit figures.

More than 44pc of health and medical traffic came directly from search engines, while over 36pc of travel-related hits came from search engines in December 2008. Almost 34pc of the online video traffic came from search engines came from search engines.

Shopping and classifieds Web sites saw nearly 26pc of their traffic directly from search engines, while news and media gained over 20pc of its traffic from search engines.