Google Loses Search Share to Yahoo, Microsoft in June

Search giant Google saw its share of U.S. searches dip during the month of June, while searches on Microsoft and Yahoo sites grew, according to data from comScore. Overall, Microsoft now accounts for 12.7 percent of U.S. searches, and Yahoo for 18.9 percent. Google’s dominance of the space dipped by over a percentage point, month-over-month, to achieve a 62.6 percent share in June, meanwhile.

However, comScore suggests Microsoft and Yahoo’s gains are not indicative of users migrating from Google, but are likely the result of the two companies publishing contextual links to search queries on their other owned and operated properties. For example, the MSN home page currently features a list of “popular searches” featuring links to search results pages from Bing. In some cases those links also feature images, and could potentially be mistaken for content.

In a blog post published last month, comScore’s EVP of analytics, Cameron Meierhoefer, said the measurement firm intends to revise the way it attributes search market share as a result. He said the new practices from Yahoo and Microsoft “[call] for a thoughtful review of how we classify various types of searches, count them and report them,” and suggested the changes to the firm’s methodology will take effect from July.