• November 26, 2008

Nielsen Online released October 2008 data for top U.S. search providers Tuesday.

All searches combined dropped 2%. Yahoo fell 12%; Microsoft, 19%; and Ask.com dropped 22.9%. The big losers were My Web Search, which declined 38.2%, and Dogpile.com Search fell 30.5%. Google, which gained 8.1% market share from Yahoo, MSN, AOL and others, wasn't the only taker. AT&T Worldnet Search rose 92.8% from the year-ago month; and AOL Search, 14.5%.

Once again, Google topped the list with an estimated 4.8 billion U.S. search queries, representing 61.2% conducted during the month. Yahoo Search ranked No. 2 with 1.3 billion search queries representing 16.9%. MSN/Windows Live Search with 885 million and 11.4% followed, along with AOL Search at 334 million and 4.3% market share, and Ask.com at 177 million and 2.3% market share.--Laurie Sullivan