Google’s share of the US desktop search market has reached its lowest level in the last 3 years.

The company SurveyMonkey conducted a study of the search engines market. Analysts studied the data obtained during the survey of American users. Respondents were asked to indicate the main search engine they use.

Using the SurveyMonkey Audience tool, 379 respondents in the United States were interviewed. According to Eli Schwartz, the online marketing manager for Eli Schwartz, this amount is enough to be considered representative.
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Source: SurveyMonkey

On the desktop platform, Google uses 77% of men and 71% of women. On mobile devices - 76% and 78%, respectively. 82% of users under 45 years of age and only 66% of respondents over 45 choose the main search engine Google.

The results of the study indicate that the position of Google search engine shaken.

Desktop search

The distribution of the share of the leading search engines on desktop systems today:

1. Google - 75%;
2. Yahoo - 8%;
3. Bing - 7%;
4. DuckDuckGo - 2%;
5. Aol - 1%;
6. Ask - 1%;
7. Baidu - 1%.

In October 2014, the top three looked like this:

1. Google - 80%;
2. Yahoo - 8%;
3. Bing - 6%.

At the same time, according to analytical company comScore in October 2014, Google’s share of the US desktop search market was 67%. In October 2015, 63.9%; Bing - 20.8%; Yahoo - 12.5%.

In 2013, comScore reported that Google’s share was 66.9%; in 2012 - 66.9%; in 2011 - 65.6%.

Thus, this year the company's share in the US desktop search market has reached its minimum value.

SurveyMonkey results are at odds with comScore data. However, Eli Schwartz notes that they are consistent with data from Google Analytics accounts, according to which Google accounts for 80 to 90% of organic transitions.

Mobile search

The survey SurveyMonkey for 2015 also contains a question about user preferences in mobile search:

1. Google - 78%;
2. Yahoo - 5%;
3. Bing - 3%;
4. DuckDuckGo - 1%;
5. Ask - 1%;
6. Aol - 1%.

Survey participants were also asked how often they use the functionality of voice assistants (Google Now, Siri, Cortana) on mobile devices:

• 47% never use it.
• 11% - used every day.

Despite the positioning of voice assistants by Google and Apple as a key functionality, only certain users use them.

In an attempt to strengthen leadership

In October, Google entered into an agreement with the company Yahoo. Now Yahoo will use its search and advertising. At the disposal of Yahoo will be the search tools for web pages and images, an advertising tool for AdSense for search. As a result, visitors will be able to search the site for the necessary data, and resource owners will be able to receive revenue from the display of relevant ads on the results pages.

Yahoo has another deal - this time with Microsoft . It involved the transfer of all Yahoo traffic to the Bing search engine. However, the new head of Yahoo, Marissa Mayer (ex-Google employee), “knocked out” Microsoft’s rights to 49% of the traffic. For now, Bing has 51%.

These 49% will be transferred to Google, which is to be expected in this situation.