By Jim Hedger
Expert Author
Article Date: 2005-09-29

Dutch Internet-analytics firm OneStat released their autumn study of global usage share for the major search engines.

Predictably, Google remains in first place with over half of all search engine references coming from Google.com or one of its regionally branded search tools such as Google.co.uk or Google.com.au . Yahoo placed second with MSN taking a distant third. Surprisingly, AOL (which still shows results generated by Google) beat Ask for the number four spot.

According to traffic generated by the search engines, the global usage rankings are:

1) Google 56.9%

2) Yahoo 21.2%

3) MSN 8.9%

4) AOL 3.2%

The methodology OneStat uses is mentioned in their press release:

"A global usage share of xx percent for search engine Y means that xx percent of the visitors of Internet users arrived at sites that are using one of OneStat.com's services by using search engine Y. All numbers mentioned in the research are averages and all measurements are normalised to the GMT timezone. Research is based on a sample of 2 million visitors divided into 20,000 visitors of 100 countries each day. "
About the Author:
Jim Hedger is the SEO Manager of StepForth Search Engine Placement Inc. Based in Victoria, BC, Canada, StepForth is the result of the consolidation of BraveArt Website Management, Promotion Experts, and Phoenix Creative Works, and has provided professional search engine placement and management services since 1997. http://www.stepforth.com/ Tel - 250-385-1190 Toll Free - 877-385-5526 Fax - 250-385-1198