New Comscore Methodology Reduces Search Market Share for Microsoft and Yahoo

Microsoft and Yahoo’s combined search market share has dropped from 32.7 percent to 28.1 percent, according to comScore, as a result of alterations to its data collection methodology.

Last month, comScore announced it would revise the way it collects data for its monthly search market share reports to account for Microsoft and Yahoo’s recent practices of publishing contextual links to search queries on their owned and operated properties. The measurement firm suggested that behavior was inflating the two companies’ share of actual user-driven searches, and did not “reflect specific user intent to interact with search results.”

In July, therefore, it began publishing “explicit core search share” data alongside data gleaned from its old methodology, which omits such contextual searches.

Based on the old methodology, comScore estimates Google lost market share for a second consecutive month, accounting for 61.6 percent of U.S. searches. Meanwhile Yahoo grew its share by a percentage point over the same period, giving the search alliance partnership between itself and Microsoft a total market share of 32.7 percent of searches.

ComScore’s new methodology tells a similar story with regards to changes in market share, with Yahoo gaining searches at Google’s expense. It tells a very different one with regards to overall market share, though, with Yahoo and Microsoft accounting for a total of 28.1 percent of searches – a much smaller number than the 32.7 percent reported by the old methodology, cited frequently by executives at the two firms.