Hitwise Dubs Yahoo! the Local Search Leader
Despite all the competition in search, Hitwise reported that Google had increased its search market share over the past year. Collectively, Google, Yahoo! and MSN together represented 93.5 percent of all search traffic. Here are the percentages according to the company:
- Google: 59.2 percent
- Yahoo!: 28.8 percent
- MSN: 5.5 percent
Yet Hitwise says the following about local:
Visits to Yahoo! Local (local.yahoo.com) were 4.4 times greater than visits to Google Local (local.google.com) in July 2005. However, Google Local€™s market share increased 61 percent between February 2005 and July 2005, while Yahoo! Local grew 14 percent. Google Local€™s catch-up is occurring amidst the growth of Google Maps (maps.google.com), which has quickly grown to become the third-ranked site in the Hitwise Travel €" Maps category in July 2005. Maps have proved important to local search users, as 17 percent of Yahoo! Local€™s visitors went directly onto Yahoo! Maps in July 2005.
In June of this year, investment advisory service Change Wave conducted a member survey (1,440 online respondents) about Google and Yahoo! usage. Among the data collected, Change Wave found that 5 percent used Yahoo! Local and 7 percent used Google Local.
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Related:
Press release
Search Engine Watch blog write up