Search Portal Rankings Rundown

A study by research firm Compete (found via Search Engine Watch) found Google has the most loyalty among its users. Here is how the rest of the search engines stacked up:

* Google: 71.0%
* Yahoo!: 48.1%
* MSN: 27.8%
* Excite: 23.4%
* AOL: 23.2%
* Ask: 21.6%
* AltaVista: 16.6%
* Clusty: 10.3%
* A9: 6.4%
* Lycos: 5.8%

Meanwhile, a separate study by BIGresearch reports that Yahoo! leads in overall purchase influence. The study broke down purchasing decisions by category, including electronics, apparel and automotive. Google came out on top in electronics, while Yahoo! led most other categories. Read the release and breakdown of scoring here.

And finally, the top Web sites for overall traffic in January were reported by Nielsen/NetRatings. Yahoo! came out on top, and four of the top five sites were portals. Google came in fourth.

These studies aren’t directly related, but they all involve search engines and portals and continue to paint a picture of the battle for usage and market share. Local is a large and very important piece of that market share, although it was not specifically broken out in any of these studies.