In late December, Nielsen/NetRatings released data for its top US search providers, which showed that Ask.com was the only site that outpaced Google in year-over-year growth in searches conducted. Sites in the Nielsen/NetRatings are ranked by total number of online search queries.
Google had a 31% growth rate from November 2005, which accounted for 49.5% of US searches in November. Ask.com experienced a 33% growth rate over November 2005, but accounted for only 2.6% of US searches. Google had an estimated 3.1 billion search queries in November '06, while Ask.com had significantly less at 160 million search queries.
Google ranked #1 for total number of search queries, with Yahoo coming in a distant second place. Yahoo had just 1.5 billion search queries - just half of what Google had - and 24.3% of the search market. In third place, came MSN/Live Search, which experienced negative year over year growth. Their growth rate declined 12%, with just 8.2% market share. AOL came in fourth with a 6.2% share of the search market.