Google once again increased its share of the search marketplace in April, according to estimates released Wednesday by comScore. Google's share of core searches rose to 61.6% in April, up from 59.8%
in March, extending its lead over the rest of the major search engines.
Interestingly, Google took a bigger slice of a diminishing online search marketplace. According to comScore,
total core searches in the U.S. online marketplace fell 2% to 10.582 billion in April from 10.771 billion in March.
Yahoo, the No. 2 player, fell to a 20.4% share of the core search market--down
from 21.3% in March--while No. 3 player Microsoft dropped to 9.1% from 9.84% in March. While Microsoft has been courting Yahoo, their combined share of the online search marketplace (29.5%) would
still be less than half of Google's.
AOL fell to 4.6% from 4.8% of the market, while Ask.com fell to 4.3% from 4.7% of the market.
--Joe Mandese