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Google Drops Below 75% of Desktop Searches, Yahoo overtakes Bing as Second Largest Search Engine

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For the first time since July 2008, Google has dropped below 75% for their share of US desktop searches, losing ground to the Firefox driven Yahoo Search.

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Google now owns 73.67% of US desktop searches. In December, that number was 75.14%.

It is worth noting that it’s a desktop searches where Google suffered this drop, where some can be attributed to the fact that Firefox switched their default search engine from Google to Yahoo. However, with almost ¾ of all the US searches on desktop, Google is still doing very well in comparison to the other search engines when including mobile – 78.51%.

Firefox switch to Yahoo has resulted in a significant improvement of the number of searchers using Yahoo. And it is good enough that now Yahoo’s number two for the largest search engine in the US, overtaking Bing when looking at all searches (desktop, mobile, tablet and console). However because Yahoo search results are actually coming from Bing, it isn’t necessarily as bad for Bing as it might be otherwise, and Yahoo and Bing are only halfway through their search provider contract, so if Yahoo decided to change who provides their search results – or take it back in house – that would be a few years down the road before it could impact Bing.StatCounter-search_engine-US-monthly-201502-201502-bar

However, when looking week by week, you can see that Yahoo is slowly dropping while Google is regaining that, meaning it is likely that searchers are making the change back to Google.

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Jennifer Slegg

Founder & Editor at The SEM Post
Jennifer Slegg is a longtime speaker and expert in search engine marketing, working in the industry for almost 20 years. When she isn't sitting at her desk writing and working, she can be found grabbing a latte at her local Starbucks or planning her next trip to Disneyland. She regularly speaks at Pubcon, SMX, State of Search, Brighton SEO and more, and has been presenting at conferences for over a decade.

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