Consumers still turn to Google more than other search engines, but the Mountain View, Calif. company faces sharp competition from Yahoo! and MSN, predicted research industry executives Monday at JupiterResearch's Search Engine Strategies conference.

"Customers are up for grabs," said Ken Cassar, director of strategic analysis for Nielsen//NetRatings, at a panel discussion focusing on search engines from the consumers' point of view. In research unveiled at the conference, Cassar reported that Google still leads the market in search engines, with a 45 percent U.S. share, trailed by Yahoo! with a 29 percent share and MSN with around 15 percent. But Cassar also said that customers show little loyalty to particular search engines: 58 percent of Google searchers also used one of the other top search engines, while 71 percent of Yahoo! searchers and 70 percent of MSN searchers did likewise.

Research companies comScore Networks and Hitwise also found Google the market leader, although with different percentages: comScore reported that Google accounted for 36 percent of U.S. Internet searches, while Hitwise's Vice President of Research, Bill Tancer, said Google was responsible for 55 percent of U.S. Internet searches.

comScore's Vice President for Search Solutions, James Lamberti, agreed with Cassar that Web surfers have little allegiance to their search engines. He reported that 65 percent of searchers use more than one search engine each month.

One reason that consumers use multiple search engines, said both Cassar and Lamberti, is that search companies haven't offered good reasons to be faithful. "Switching is extremely easy," said Nielsen//NetRatings' Cassar, who suggested that search engines focus on developing personalization tools, which could give users more of an incentive to stay with one company.

Advertising and marketing are also likely to play a role in whether Google continues as the dominant search engine, said Lamberti. "Clearly, the branding of these engines is going to play a major role in who consumers choose to use," he said, adding that search is "still a wide-open market."

MSN, which officially entered the space with its own search engine last month, is promoting its tool with a recent high-profile ad campaign. Second-tier search player AskJeeves also debuted a consumer ad campaign several weeks ago.

Hitwise's Bill Tancer reported that Google, MSN, and Yahoo! attract slightly different demographic groups. More than half--54.2 percent--of Google's users were male, while Yahoo!'s and MSN's were predominantly female (50.1 percent female for Yahoo! and 52.9 percent for MSN). Google's users also skewed toward having higher incomes than Yahoo!'s users, reported Tancer.