• by Rob Garner , March 17, 2010

Every few months, the company I work for releases a report called the Enterprise Search Share Index, which tallies up actual search clicks referred to our clients, measured through our proprietary analytics system.  The goal is to take a view of search share based on actual referrals, one that is purposefully skewed toward enterprise-level sites across a number of major verticals, as opposed to all sites across the Web. 

Since we've been publishing these reports, the results have been markedly different from other research studies that report on the same points. The bottom line is that we see Google as generally a higher referrer to enterprise sites, and while Yahoo and Bing are significantly lower in terms of overall share, the gap between the two is narrowing at a quick pace. 

The chart below presents enterprise search share performance in views of both year-over-year, as well as month-over-month.

 

  

Google hits 80% market share for enterprise level businesses

Google increased month-over-month to command an 80.17 % natural search traffic share to enterprise-level Web sites, while Bing share increased slightly from January to February by 0.09%, to 7.16% overall. Yahoo decreased to a 9.34% share, losing 2.9% search market share year-over-year. 

AOL declined in share year-over-year, from 1.95 % in February 2009, down to 1.49 % market share in February 2010. AOL share remained stable month-over-month.  Ask.com's search market share increased slightly in month-over-month share by 0.01%, going from 0.37% up to 0.39 %. 

In the month-over-month view, again only Bing and Google made any significant gain in market share.  AOL and Ask.com somewhat surprisingly leveled off month-over-month. 


Bing making an impact, and preparing to overtake Yahoo

Overall, Bing's gain in share has had the greatest impact on both Yahoo and AOL.  While Yahoo's loss of almost 3% of the search market is significant, AOL search users are migrating elsewhere, with AOL losing almost 25% of the entire search business.  That 0.45 % loss in search market share is a blink and blip for Google, but a much bigger chunk for AOL. 

I've also been monitoring trend data in the search share race, particularly what I believe to be the inevitable catch-up in market share for Bing (against Yahoo). Based on current trends, we see them overtaking Yahoo later this year, possibly even before there is any kind of direct syndication of Bing results into Yahoo properties. 

On that last note, enterprise search marketers should start gearing up for the change from Bing to Yahoo.  It's not a bad idea to start with gap analysis, understanding what you currently gain from both channels, and what content strategies you will need to cover any missing areas for the changeover.  But nothing seems to be stopping Google from further increasing their dominance for enterprise-level businesses. I predicted not too long ago that Google would go as far as 85% market share in 18 months, and that prediction is coming closer and closer with each month.