Web Search Volume Just Keeps Going Up with Google Increasing Its Lead

It can be awe-inspiring to occasionally look at the growth of web search and, in particular, the continuing success of Google. This topic was addressed in a recent article (see; Speaking Of Competition, Google’s Search Market Share Just Went Up Again In August To 63%). At the end of this note is a chart from the article. The following are some of my observations about these data:

• Total U.S. searches (i.e., queries) in August, 2008, were nearly 12 billion, a year-to-year increase of 19.6%. It's hard for me to envision a scenario in the near future in which search volume will decline.
• The percentage of total web searches attributable to Google continues to rise, amounting to 63.0% of all searches in August. This is a 4.5% gain in market share for the year.
• Yahoo has a 19.6% market share. Interestingly enough, Yahoo has always been the highest ranked search engine for readers of Lab Soft News. I have no idea why this is the case but would be interested in hearing from some of my readers about this question.
• Microsoft has less than half the search volume of Yahoo and with the number shrinking by 11.7% in the year-to-year comparison. I have personally tried various search engines but always come back to Google because I think that it offers the highest search efficiency.

So what is Microsoft's response to this dismal showing? -- to pay people to use its search engine (see: Microsoft to pay people to use its search engine). Under the cash program, Web shoppers who sign up for an account and buy items found using Microsoft's Live Search cashback site will receive a percentage of the purchase price deposited into their account. When the total reaches $5, the shoppers can redeem their bonus via eBay's PayPal. Microsoft said the rebates are funded with a portion of the money it collects from advertisers.

I am going to go way out on a limb here and suggest that this Microsoft program will not reverse the downward spiral that has been illustrated here. My sense is that most of the people searching the web have some sense of what their time is worth and the "cost" of using an inferior search engine will generally exceed any monetary rewards that Microsoft may offer them.

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