Which search engine is on top? How Google, Yahoo and Bing compare
(CBS) - You guessed it, Google is still on top. However, the recent comScore search marketshare data for August 2011 finds that the search engine giant is actually down (by just a little).
Google fell to 64.8 percent (down from 65.1 percent in July) in explicit core search - which, according to comScore, "excludes contextually driven searches that do not reflect specific user intent to interact with the search results."
"Overall, the big picture hasn't changed, but it will be something that Microsoft can revel in during the BUILD conference this week: Google's search marketshare is nearly 65 percent while Yahoo! and Bing are collectively in the low-30 percent range," reports ZDNet.
Yahoo! grew a little for the second straight month to 16.3 percent (up from 16.1 percent) in explicit core search. "It's unlikely that the share figures will change as a result of Carol Bartz's resignation as chief executive and board member of Yahoo - but a company without a leader or firm direction could result in long-term strategy problems for the company," according to ZDNet.
Bing, a search engine from Microsoft, which saw no gains in July, was at 14.7 percent (up from 14.4 percent) in explicit core search.
Rounding out the list was Ask.com, which grew to 3 percent (up after two months straight at 2.9 percent), and AOL, which fell to 1.4 percent (down from 1.5 percent).
When comScore factored in queries of the "total core search" variety - which includes partner searches, cross-channel searches and contextual searches of the five major search engines - Google still topped the list. Out of the 19.5 billion total core search queries by Americans in August, Google Sites ranked first with 12.5 billion searches (up 1 percent from last month), followed by Yahoo! Sites With 3.6 billion (up 5 percent from last month) and Microsoft Sites with 2.6 billion (up 1 percent from last month).
