LiveSide - News blog : ComScore

comScore US Search share numbers: Microsoft continues to spin wheels

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 11:42:08 GMT

The US search share numbers are out for February from comScore, and the bottom line is that its more of the same for Microsoft and Live Search. US search share and Microsoft stock seem to share a lot in common, lots of hype and rhetoric about how things are getting better, and flat flat flat performance. Except for an anomaly of a blip last June when Microsoft tried to play games with the numbers, literally, Microsoft has not made any advances in search share, and has actually lost a bit of share in the two years since Microsoft switched MSN Search to (Windows) Live Search.

For the record, here are the comScore numbers for February:

Even with a major revision last fall, and a stealth upgrade of the UI last week (and what was that all about, anyway?), in the US anyway, Live Search is going nowhere. Oh well at least it didn't lose 15% like Spaces.

Ask.com Sponsored Listings now integrated into Microsoft adManager beta

Matthew — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 00:34:00 GMT

Office Live is increasing the reach of small businesses everywhere with the addition of Ask Sponsored Listings, part of the IAC Advertising Network. This is a huge deal for Office Live, which has had a bumpy past, and adManager, which is still in beta. Now not only would adManager customers reach their advertisements through MSN and Windows Live properties, but also Ask.com, with a myriad of wholly-owned search sites (mywebsearch.com, mysearch.com), proprietary content sites (myway.com, iwon.com, excite.com), and 90+ syndicated network partnerships like Evite, CNET, Citysearch, and Infospace to name a few. IAC boasts Ask Sponsored Listings on their web site.

Benefits

Tap into the 3rd largest search network

Access to campaign optimization experts

Boost clicks without impacting CPA metrics

Audience & Usage (based upon comScore MediaMetrix January 2007)

61.4 million monthly unique users
35% Reach
11.5% Share of Searches

This means that Google's AdSense is by no means the only fish in the sea, and Microsoft is extremely interested in capturing a large portion of the small business market to build it's search-based revenue. This is the first time in 5 years that 2 of the largest search engines have teamed up, and amazingly enough Microsoft didn't purchase a company to do it. Based upon the latest figures from comScore, this means the two combined will reach 18.2% of the search audience, over 1.5 billion search queries per month. I wonder if Microsoft is pursuing any other search engines, after all they already have a partnership with Yahoo! and their messenger service.

Microsoft is offering a $50 bonus for companies that sign-up for the service, after a $5 processing fee, and now until the end of the month, there is also a $10,000 sweepstakes. Sweepstakes seem to work well for Microsoft, just take a look at Live Search Club.

@Matthew

ComScore: Windows Live gets a search share bump

Harrison Hoffman — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 03:08:00 GMT

Today, ComScore released their new set of search engine share stats for May through June and things are looking good for Live Search.

This reported 2.9% bump in Microsoft's search share serves as more support to the Compete.com data that we reported on last week. As expected, ComScore is also crediting Microsoft's Live Search Club as the reason for the bump in their share. ComScore remarks,

"Microsoft Sites experienced a significant increase in search query volume (up 36 percent) and search market share (up 2.9 share points) in June, due in large part to Live Search Club, a program launched by Microsoft in late May to engage and reward users of Live Search."

As seen above, Microsoft collected their increased search share from a combination of losses from Google, Yahoo, and Time Warner. Obviously Microsoft still has a long way to go in order to compete with Google, or even Yahoo, but this is certainly a step in the right direction.