New US figures from Nielsen show that while Google remained the top search engine in June, accounting for 65% of all US searches during the month, there was more significant movement among its closest competitors.
Although Yahoo (13.7% share of US searches in June 2010) remained ahead of MSN/Windows Live/Bing (13.4%) the gap was less than half what it was in May 2010, when Yahoo! had 13.8% share compared to 13% for MSN/Windows Live/Bing.
Nielsen added that between them, the top three engines account for 92% of all US searches in June 2010 – a slight increase from 91.8% the previous month. Factoring in AOL and Ask means the top five engines account for 96.1% market share – up from 95.9% in the previous month.
At the end of June, online research firm eMarketer predicted that UK internet advertising will reach £3.79 billion this year, adding that search accounted for 60.7% of UK internet ad spending in 2009.
Magna recently forecast that global online advertising will rise by 12.4% in constant currency terms during 2010, to $61 billion dollars.