Search Market Share and Longer Queries

Pete Prestipino
by Pete Prestipino 12 Apr, 2011
Search Market Share and Longer Queries

 Hitwise released data today revealing that while Google still commands 64% of the search market share, Bing-powered search is on the rise. 

Google accounted for 64.42 percent of all U.S. searches conducted in the four weeks ending April 2, 2011, while Bing-powered search comprised 30.01 percent. The remaining 69 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis report accounted for just 5.58 percent of U.S. searches.

Perhaps the most interesting angle is that Yahoo! Search and Bing achieved the highest "success rates" in March 2011 with 80% of searches executed resulted in a visit to a website. Google achieved a success rate of 66 percent. This may imply that 

Longer search queries - five to eight words - were down 3 percent from February 2011 to March 2011. Shorter search queries - those averaging one to four words long - increased 1 percent from February 2011 to March 2011. One-word searches comprised the majority of searches, amounting to 24.40 percent of all queries, a 2 percent increase from February 2011 to March 2011.

Pete Prestipino
Pete Prestipino
Digital marketing executive with proven experience in all aspects of search engine optimization (SEO), performance-based advertising, consumer-generated/social media, email marketing, lead generation, Web design, usability, and analytics. - 20-year Internet marketing veteran, currently serving as the Digital Marketing Campaign Manager at Antenna Group (formerly Chicago Digital). - Former Editor-In-Chief of Website Magazine, and a regular speaker on Web technology digital marketing strategy - Author of several books on digital marketing Including Web 360: The Fundamentals of Web Success; Affiliate 360: The Fundamentals of Performance Marketing; Domains 360: The Fundamentals of Buying & Selling Domain Names, and SEO 360: The Fundamentals of Search Engine Optimization.