comScore Releases April U.S. Search Engine Rankings
comScore, a leader in measuring the digital world, today released its monthly qSearch analysis of activity across competitive search engines. In April 2007, Google Sites captured 49.7 percent of the U.S. search market, gaining 1.4 share points from the previous month.
Context & Ripple Effects
comScore has been building out its measurement toolkit this spring — it announced its new Visits metric in March 2007 — and the monthly qSearch rankings are the franchise product that keeps its numbers at the center of how the search business talks about itself.
The April 2007 reading matters because of its trajectory: Google Sites at 49.7 percent of U.S. searches, up 1.4 points in a single month, puts the company on the edge of capturing half the U.S. query market by comScore's count — a level rivals have been unable to arrest.
First-order effects
- Google's 1.4-point monthly gain leaves the trailing engines ceding query volume, and with it the paid-click inventory their ad businesses are built on.
- comScore's qSearch series is now the de facto scoreboard every player in U.S. search gets measured by, raising the stakes on its methodology.
Second-order effects
- Advertisers follow concentrated query volume, so each share point Google adds deepens its auctions and strengthens its pricing position relative to competitors' networks.
- Rivals forced to compete on a metric Google dominates will lean harder on differentiation arguments — vertical search, partnerships — rather than head-to-head query share.
Third-order effects
- If the concentration pattern holds, U.S. search hardens into a single-gatekeeper market where one company controls the default entry point to web advertising — the kind of structural dominance that historically draws regulator attention.
- The fight over who counts searches (panel-based qSearch versus server logs, and comScore's newer Visits framing) points to measurement itself becoming a competitive battleground as shares consolidate.
The trend: U.S. search share is steadily concentrating around Google, with comScore's monthly qSearch rankings serving as the industry's accepted scoreboard.