WebProNews

The search engine market share for Ask grew incrementally by Compete's figures for October, likely due to the heavy advertising being run by Ask's owner IAC. Google gained a point to take 68 percent of US search market share, while MSN and Live Search held serve. That's according to numbers provided by metrics firm Compete, which noted the controversial Club Live searches are not included in the MSN/Live figures.

Compete's figures showed Ask picking up 3.9 percent of the market, gaining from 3.6 percent in September. Microsoft's share, MSN/Live combined, remained unchanged from September to October at 9.2 percent.

Yahoo didn't gain or hold its share by Compete's reckoning. "Yahoo! had another tough month with market share dipping to the lowest level yet on a 2% decline in query volume," said Compete's Jeremy Crane. "In the past year Yahoo! web search has lost a full 11.5 points in market share … ouch."

Query volume in October rose for Google, MSN/Live, and Ask, but declined by 30 million month over month at Yahoo.

Believe it or not, that decrease could be a good thing. Yahoo's search team has improved core search, and debuted their Search Assist feature. It could be people aren't needing as many queries on Yahoo as they did in the past.

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