Archive: May, 2008

Nielsen Online released its estimation of the Top 10 US Search Providers in April 2008. Nielsen Online bases its numbers on the total number of search queries conducted at each search provider.

Looking beyond the dominance of Google over Yahoo! and Microsoft’s struggle to break the 10% market-share mark, the Nielsen list shows an interesting micro-glimpse of the search engine landscape and search-user habits.

Here’s Nielsen Online’s view of the Top10 with a few short notes (of my own) for each.
1/ Google Search - Google.com

• 5,109,444,000 search queries served
• 35.4% growth over April 2007
• 62.0% share of searches

2/ Yahoo! Search – Yahoo.com

• 1,446,410,000 search queries served
• -3.4% growth over April 2007
• 17.5% share of searches

3/ MSN/Windows Live Search - MSN.com and Live.com are two unique search addresses both delivering results from Live Search.

• 796,038,000 search queries served
• 30.0% growth over April 2007
• 9.7% share of searches

4/ AOL Search - AOL Search delivers organic results from Google’s index.

• 352,039,000 search queries served
• -5.1% growth over April 2007
• 4.3% share of searches

5/  Ask.com Search - Ask.com

• 171,545,000 search queries served

Most people involved in technology will have heard of Moore’s Law. Briefly stated, back in 1965 the co-founder of chip maker Intel, Gordon Moore, wrote a whitepaper suggesting the number of transistors placed on an integrated circuit could double every two years. That means the processing power of computing devices could double every couple of years. Similarly, computing devices can get smaller as more powerful chips are created on smaller surfaces. Forty three years later, Moore’s Law still holds true.

A less famous but equally important law, phrased by the founder of 3com and the inventor of ethernet, is known as Metcalfe’s Law. In 1980, Bob Metcalfe figured the value of a telecommunications network is equal to the square of the number of nodes on the network. The addition of a relatively small number of nodes to a network enables that network to serve far more individuals or allows individuals on that network to make far more connections. The greater the number of nodes, the far more valuable the network.