The numbers released by comScore for top US home, work, and university online users for July through September 2006 showed Google's third quarter search share was as strong as its financial report.

The Sun Rises, Water's Wet, And Google's First

Google and Ask.com both gained share through the summer months of 2006, while Yahoo and Microsoft saw theirs decline. The figures from comScore's qSearch tell the awful truth - Google isn't just leading the category, but extending its lead:

	Jul-06	Aug-06	Sep-06	Pt Chg
Total Internet Population	100%	100%	100%	N/A
Google Sites	43.7	44.1	45.1	1.0
Yahoo! Sites	28.8	28.7	28.1	-0.6
Microsoft Sites	12.8	12.5	11.9	-0.6
Ask Network	5.4	5.5	5.8	0.3
Time Warner Network	5.9	5.6	5.6	0.0
source: comScore qSearch

Most of the losses by Yahoo and Microsoft have been swept up by Google. But not all of them. Ask.com has been aggressively promoting its search through TV and radio advertising. The company has rolled out a lot of features aimed at placing a wide range of information at the fingertips of its users.



Yahoo has taken steps toward improving its search. They have hired several noteworthy people like Andrei Broder, Raghu Ramakrishnan, and Ricardo Baeza-Yates to their search and research teams to help improve in the search area.



They need some solid results out of their talented recruits. The release of Panama, Yahoo's new search advertising system that promises greater relevancy with ad displays, needs to feed off of a highly relevant search product to truly benefit the company's fortunes.



Microsoft already has a fortune, thanks to its long-standing dominance of the operating system and productivity suite platforms with Windows and Office. Their Windows Live Search has seen some positive reviews, but people just aren't using it in the numbers seen by Google or Yahoo!



Ask.com could be on the way to making big footstep noises behind Microsoft. While Microsoft has dropped under 12 percent in search share, Ask is on pace to move up to 6 percent. Microsoft can't be comfortable with giving up another full percentage point in its lead over Ask, let alone falling farther behind the top two.



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Tags: Search, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Ask



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