Nielsen/NetRatings yesterday announced that Google continued its long reign through the month of April as the king of all searches conducted online. Year over year, Google gained three percentage points in market share, while Yahoo! remained flat and MSN dipped slightly.
Google accounted for 50 percent of all searches conducted in April, followed by Yahoo! and MSN, with 22 and 11 percent, respectively, said Nielsen/NetRatings. Another interesting over the last year trend from this latest report shows Google Search growing 34 percent year over year, followed by Yahoo! Search with 27 percent growth and MSN Search growing 10 percent year over year.
Consumers, added Nielsen/NetRatings, are increasingly connecting with major retail stores via search engines, underscoring the influence search can have on online and offline buying. This was clearly evident by their tracked top five shopping keywords for April being all brick and mortar stores such as Home Depot, Wal Mart and Target.