It is the US Thanksgiving today so there is a serious lack of action or attention happening in and around the North American tech industry. Perhaps that lack of attention explains why this short item appeared in yesterday’s Barron’s Blog.
Google: The Evidence Mounts; They’re Taking Share
The piece outlines how Google holds almost 59% of the search market share in the United States and nearly 70% of searches globally using comScore and Hitwise data reported here and in other search blogs earlier.
To me, the brief piece points out and reinforces how far behind the curve the mainsteam media and investment communities are in understanding the true scope of Google’s dominance in search. Since 2003, Google has served a minimum of 45% of all search results, peaking at nearly 85% in 2004 and 2005 when it directly produced Yahoo! results and indirectly produced MSN results.
Google’s dominance has had an enormous effect on how the Web has evolved with results that could be characterized as both good and evil. Its existence helped pull the North American tech world out of the dot-com bust of 2000 and its innovation has propelled the tech world further than any company before it with the possible exceptions of Microsoft and Sun. For SEOs and SEMs, Google is far and away the most important venue and is the one first thought of when contemplating a search marketing campaign.