Robin Goad, research director, Hitwise, Revolution UK, 01 November 2007, 00:00am

Tracker: Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! fight it out

The combined properties of the four large search engines, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! and Ask, accounted for 94 per cent of all UK searches in September 2007.

The market continues to consolidate around the big brands, as this is an increase from 91 per cent one year earlier.

Google is responsible for this growth, with its share increasing from 73.3 per cent in September 2006 to 82.7 per cent in September 2007. Google's share is more than 18 times that of its nearest competitor, Microsoft, which has a 4.5 per cent share. This is followed by Yahoo! with 4.1 per cent share.

Images accounted for 6.1 per cent of searches, 11.4 per cent up on last 2006.

However, Google's web-based mail service trails Microsoft and Yahoo!. Microsoft's web-based mail services are the most visited, with a 61.3 per cent market share. This is more than ten times Google's share and a 21 per cent increase on September 2006. Yahoo!'s web-based email services are the second most popular, with a 22.8 per cent market share. Google's share is 6.11 per cent, up by 126 per cent since September 2006.

- See feature, p39.