Not that there isn't still plenty of "fresh ground" for other search companies to claim. Nielsen//NetRating's latest data indicates that the number of searches continues to grow at a more than healthy pace, totaling about 5.1 billion in December 2005, an increase of 55% from the almost 3.3 billion searches made in December 2004. Meanwhile, the number of Internet users rose just 3%, clearly showing that searching is becoming an ever more significant online activity.
Google remained the top search engine, and even increased its dominance, accounting for nearly 49% of all searches. Most of this gain came at the expense of MSN, which saw its search share decline from 14% to under 11%. Yahoo! essentially held steady. The three top sites handled over 81% of all searches.
Google increased its market share even though all three top search engines were used for more searches. Google's growth was strong enough that its competitors' market share declined. In fact, the market leader saw the number of searches conducted through its site rise by over 1 million between December 2004 and December 2005, a change of 75%. Yahoo! was used for 53% more searches in 2005 than in 2004, and MSN for 20% more.
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