Google's US search market share rises, Yahoo! declines

Google Inc, the world’s biggest search-engine company, increased its US market share to 65.3 per cent in September, up from 64.8 per cent in August, as Yahoo! Inc dropped to less than 16 per cent, according to ComScore Inc.

Yahoo! remained No. 2, even as its market share fell to 15.5 per cent from 16.3 per cent, Reston, Virginia-based ComScore said on Tuesday. Microsoft Corp, No. 3, was unchanged at 14.7 per cent.

Google, which gets most of its revenue from search advertising, has introduced new features to help it stay ahead of rivals. In June, the company unveiled Instant Pages, providing quicker connections to links in query results. The change is designed to cut two to five seconds from the process.

Microsoft and Yahoo! have struggled to erode Google’s leadership, even after joining forces in the search market last year. Still, Google faces slowing growth in the advertising industry. Spending on US search ads rose seven per cent in the third quarter, down from 12 per cent in the previous three months, according to IgnitionOne Inc, an online marketing firm.

Shares of Google, based in Mountain View, California, rose $22.05 to $537.17 on Tuesday. Yahoo!, located in Sunnyvale, California, climbed 37 cents to $15.84, while Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft advanced 69 cents to $26.94.

Later this week, Google is set to release its third-quarter results. The company has tried to expand sales by moving into new areas, including mobile-phone advertising and display ads.

“We believe core search is holding up well, and display and mobile continue to deliver outsized growth,” Doug Anmuth, an analyst at JPMorgan Chase & Co in New York, said in a research note on Tuesday.