Though it continues to fall behind Google in other categories, Yahoo
currently holds the lead for the most toolbar searches, but only by the
thinnest of margins.
According to newly released data from comScore Media Metrix, Yahoo sites
garnered 48.5 percent of toolbar searches in November just slightly ahead of
Google, which grabbed 46.4 percent.
Toolbar search activity as a whole, however, only accounted for 12 percent of the total volume of searches in November based on comScore’s data.
Search toolbars have been around for some time. Google’s Toolbar, which
was predated by the Yahoo companion toolbar, was released in December 2000.
Until 2005, both the Yahoo and the Google
toolbars were only officially available for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer
browser.
In February, Yahoo released its Toolbar for Mozilla Firefox, and Google followed suit in July.
For the month of November there were 5.15 billion searches conducted by
Americans in 2005, which is up from the November 2004 mark by 9 percent. The gain in searches however was not equally shared by all the major search vendors.
Overall, Google continues to add to its market-leading search position
accounting for 39.8 percent of all search queries in November of 2005, up by
5.2 percent over a year ago.
In contrast Yahoo fell from 32 percent in 2004 to 29.5 percent in 2005. MSN Microsoft sites also reported a year-over-year search share loss of negative 1.8 percent, reporting a November 2005 share of 14.2 percent.
