Latest search numbers not good for Microsoft

ComScore published its November search-query share numbers on December 19. The news wasn't good for Live Search.

ComScore's data is for the U.S. market. Of the 12.3 billion core searches done in November, Google sites had 63.5 percent share (up 0.4 percent from October). Yahoo sites had 20.4 percent. Microsoft sites had 8.3 percent. Yahoo and Microsoft both lost share in November; Yahoo was down .1 percent and Microsoft, .2 percent, according to comScore.

In terms of number of queries performed, all three of the top search-engine vendors were down compared to October 2008. (ComScore attributed this to November having fewer days than October.) Google sites handled 7.8 billion core searches; Yahoo sites handled 2.5 billion and Microsoft sites about 1 billion. Microsoft's share here was down 6 percent, from month to month. (Google's was down 3 percent and Yahoo was down 2 percent, comparatively.)

Cracking that ten percent share mark is looking like an increasingly tough barrier for Microsoft to break....