Google’s share of the US search market has fallen below 75pc for the first time since 2008, according to new figures from StatCounter.
The balance is being tipped by gains made by Yahoo! in particular.
In January Google took 74.8pc of US search referrals followed by Bing at 12.4pc and Yahoo! at 10.9pc.
This is the highest share of the US search market achieved by Yahoo! in over five years.
“Some analysts expected Yahoo to fall in January as a result of Firefox users switching back to Google,” explained StatCounter’s CEO Aodhan Cullen.
“In fact Yahoo has increased US search share by half a percentage point. It will be fascinating to see if these gains continue.”
Firefox users generated 14pc of US internet usage in January
Yahoo-on-Firefox usage in the US increased from 9.9pc in November 2014 to 28.3pc in January.
Over the same period Google-on-Firefox usage in the US fell from 81.9pc to 63.9pc.
“When we removed Firefox usage from the US search data, Yahoo’s gains and Google’s losses were erased,” Cullen said.
“This highlights the importance of the default search option and the significance of the upcoming Safari search deal for the major players.”
Firefox users generated 14pc of US internet usage in January according to StatCounter.
Search image via Shutterstock
