Let's look at the statistics on the market share each search engine had back in 2002. Note that Overture is the only search engine still not around as an online destination since it is not Yahoo! Compare this to last year from a study by comScore in July of 2006 below.


2006 Search Engine Market Share Comparison*

Google - 43.7%

Yahoo! - 28.8%

MSN - 12.8%

AOL - 5.9%

Ask - 5.4%

Others - 3.4%

Top Search Engines 2002
Google 29.2%
Yahoo! 28.5%
MSN 28.1%
AOL.com 19.7%
Ask Jeeves 10.3%
Netscape 5.5%
Overture 5.4%
Lycos 4.4%
Altavista 4.4%
Looksmart 3.0%

Demographics for Search in 2002
Male 49%
Female 58.2%

Age
2-11 3.9%
12-17 11.8%
18-24 8.6%
25-34 17.5%
35-49 31.5%
45+ 37.0%
55+ 17.3%
65+ 6.6%


Time on Search Engines 2002
(in minutes per session)
Google 24.1
Altavista 18
Ask Jeeves 16.2
Yahoo! 10.7
Lycos 7.6
AT&T 7.5
Netscape 7.3
AOL.com 6.9
iWon 6.9
MSN 6

U.S. Consumers Online
July 02 July 01
Online 177.2 mil 173.6 mil
Sessions 36 32
Hours 19.2 16.5
Pageviews 1267 1114

Sources: Comscore Media Metrix and Nielsen/Netratings

* source comScore Media Metrix (http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2156431)

Next post will compare 2006 and 2007 demographics and the impact blogs have on Internet users and activities.