Google is still the UK's most popular search engine, the latest figures show.
The company's share of the online search market was 77 per cent in May, according to web monitoring firm Hitwise.
MSN and Yahoo are Google's closest competitors, the statistics revealed. Both search engines currently power about 7 per cent of all UK internet searches.
Google is also the most visited website in the UK, receiving more than twice the share of visits compared with the number two ranked site, MSN Hotmail.
"Yahoo has been slowly gaining market share of executed UK searches over the past few months and has crept up to be tied with MSN for second place," said Heather Hopkins, director of research for Hitwise UK.
In the US, Yahoo was a much stronger competitor in May. Amongst US internet users, Google powered 59 per cent of all searches, compared to Yahoo at 22 per cent.
Heather Hopkins, Hitwise UK: "Yahoo has been slowly gaining market share of executed UK searches over the past few months and has crept up to be tied with MSN for second place."
Google has launched several new services in the past few months, however Hitwise data reveals that while these attract the attention of industry commentators and webmasters, they are not gaining traction with UK consumers.
Last month, Google Finance ranked a lowly 201st in the Business & Finance - Business Information category with just 0.04 per cent share of category visits.
Yahoo Finance in contrast ranked at number one in the same category with 8.3 per cent of market share in May.
Google's association with search is so strong that 85 per cent of UK visits to Google properties went to either the UK or US search engine, according to Hitwise.
By contrast, Yahoo's portal and its email service are its strongest properties and MSN's strengths are in its communication services.
"Google is the undisputed favourite in search in the UK, however Yahoo! and MSN are much more popular for other services," added Heather Hopkins.
"Consumers are moving among these three internet brands and seem to clearly distinguish the users of each. UK consumers use Google to navigate and search the web, MSN to communicate and Yahoo! for content."
comments
Google's dominance of the UK search market cannot be a good thing for the Internet. For too many less experienced users Google has become the Internet and it is their only access point. The real strengths and diversity of the whole Interent can be slewed by the algorithms of one company. Never has mathematics been so powerful!
12th September 2006 at 10:30am
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