The Rear View Mirror of Search

The Rear View Mirror of Search

Google generates 96% of its revenue from advertising.⁽¹⁾ Google Adwords is the primary driver of this revenue leveraging the company’s most important asset – Google Search.

Over the last six years, Google has increased its dominance in a growing market – to the chagrin of Yahoo!  Below are charts from comScore showing Search measurements in 2006⁽²⁾ and 2011⁽³⁾.

2005/2006 –

According the comScore data, Americans searched the Web 5 billion times in the month of June 2005.  Of these activities, Google captured roughly 37%, Yahoo! 30% and Microsoft 16%.  Note: the party was already over for AOL by this time :-(.

Fast forward to 2011 –

Based on the comScore data, Americans searched the Web almost 17 billion times in March 20011.  That’s more than 3 fold from 2005 (5 billion to 17 billion).  Wow!

So while the market for search has been growing rapidly the last six years, Google has increased its share of the market each year.  All this, despite the huge sums of investments by Microsoft and Yahoo!  Today, Google has almost 66% of the market, up from 37% in 2005.  Yahoo! has gone from 30% to 16% (Ouch!).  And, Microsoft/MSN (now Bing) from 16% to 14%.

So, what does this mean?  Apparently, we Americans stick to the same thing – as long as it works for us.  In a complex technology jungle, Google has done a tremendous job of keeping things simple.  Case in point: Google’s Web site (search) has barely changed in the past 12 years.  Check it out for yourself at http://www.archive.org/web/web.php.

But, must all good things come to an end?  Well, this will not happen overnight.  However, savvy Internet users already segment searches by activity – friend information/FaceBook, medical insight/WebMD, reference/Wikipedia, business contacts/LinkedIn, cool apps and music/iTunes Store, games/Zynga, and so forth.  With the proliferation of mobile, the dynamics of search – what we use for search and how we use it – will change the landscape.  Will Google retain its dominance?  More to come with the Future of Search…

⁽¹⁾ Google 2010 SEC 10-K, April 2011
⁽²⁾ comScore 2006 Press Release
⁽³⁾ comScore 2011 Press Release