Microsoft Live Search a dying dog while Google soars

By Stan Beer
Monday, 06 October 2008 06:43

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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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