Stan Beer
Monday, 06 October 2008 07:43
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Microsoft appears to be having some measure of success bribing web surfers to use its online search service Live Search but they're the wrong users. Unfortunately, Microsoft is singing to its own choir.
According to statistics on the latest
blog from web analytics firm Hitwise,
Microsoft's Cashback program, which promises financial incentives to
surfers who use Live Search for finding information, is mainly
attracting existing users.
Two years ago, Google although the clear market leader, was struggling
to capture 50% market share of searches, while Yahoo! and Microsoft
combined still presented a credible alternative. However, the latest
figures from Hitwise show that Google's domination is now complete and
still growing with 71.2% market share in September - up from 70.8% in
July.
Google's continuing growth over the past quarter appears to have come
mainly at the expense of second placed Yahoo!, whose market share
dropped from 18.7% to 18.1%.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has been reduced to a bit player, managing to hold
its Live Search share steady at 5.4% in September, after a slight dip
in August to 5.3%.
Heather Dougherty, director research at Hitwise, said on the company's
blog that the share of visits to the Cashback section of MSN Live is
increasing.
"Eleven weeks ago, MSN Cashback represented 3.75% of the traffic to
Live.com and grew to 6.29% last week. This rise in Cashback’s traffic
underscores the interest in the program, which is likely to be getting
a boost from shoppers looking to save money and stretch their budgets
given the current economic climate," said Ms Dougherty.
What does this indicate?
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