Google is nibbling at the heels of Yahoo in the fight to be the leading search engine on the Internet, according to a survey released today.
WebSideStory said that Google is rapidly gaining market share and could surpass long-time leader Yahoo if the trend continues.
The survey found that as of April 24th, Google accounted for 31.87 per cent of all search referrals worldwide, compared to Yahoo's 36.35 per cent.
Google's search referral percentage has risen sharply in the past two years, from about one per cent in June 2000, while Yahoo's percentage has slipped from about 46 per cent during the same time period.
"Yahoo is seeing viable competition among search engines," said Mr Geoff Johnston, vice president of product marketing for StatMarket.
"Despite Yahoo's brand recognition, the numbers show that surfers feel confident going directly to Google to search the Web."
Google has agreements with both Yahoo and Netscape to provide "back-end" search capability for visitors conducting searches on their sites, WebSideStory noted, but Google's back-end service is not included in the survey figures, which only count visitors that search directly from Google's site.
But Johnston said: "Yahoo's use of Google's search capabilities seems to have increased Google's visibility."
In third place among top search engines is Microsoft's MSN, which posted a referral percentage of 12.73 per cent.
AFP