“The recently announced search partnership between Microsoft and Yahoo! certainly makes the combined entity a more formidable competitor to Google in the US search marketplace,” said comScore search evangelist Eli Goodman.<\/p>\n
“While they are still looking up at Google in terms of market share, they have a real opportunity to make headway given that nearly three-quarters of all searchers conduct at least one search on these engines every month.”<\/p>\n
The challenge for Microsoft and Yahoo! will be to make their joint search offering compelling enough to convert occasional users into habitual visitors, according to Goodman.<\/p>\n
With their partnership announced in late July, software giant Microsoft and internet portal Yahoo! are hoping to steal market share – and advertising dollars – from the company that has come to define Web search.<\/p>\n
Under the terms of the deal, Microsoft’s freshly-launched Bing search engine will handle queries at Yahoo! websites.<\/p>\n
Google is the overwhelming leader in a Web search and advertising market which the research firm Forrester estimates will grow by 15% a year to more than $30bn in 2014 in the United States alone.<\/p>\n
A comScore analysis released on Friday concludes that Google has the highest loyalty rate among US Internet users, with people trusting the bulk of their online searches to the California firm.<\/p>\n
In June 2009, Google had a 65% share of the core search market, compared to 28% for Yahoo! and Microsoft combined, according to comScore.<\/p>\n
“Separately, Yahoo and Bing are unable to efficiently meet the inventory needs of advertisers which are attainable through Google,” said Craig Macdonald, a senior vice president at marketing analysis firm Covario.<\/p>\n
“The combination of the two platforms, however, gives advertisers the ability to reach about 30% of the search market in a more efficient manner.”<\/p>\n
A search market share of 30% represents a “critical threshold” for many marketers when it comes to justifying spending national advertising dollars, according to Macdonald.<\/p>\n