Microsoft Catching Up on Google

Business 2.0 talks about MSN Search's recent market share growth and how much they have committed to this new advertising campaign.

According to Internet measurement firm Nielsen/NetRatings, MSN's share of the booming search-engine market jumped in February from 12.8 percent to 14.2 percent. That gain came at the expense of market leader Google (GOOG), which saw its share fall from 47.1 percent to 45.9 percent. (Yahoo (YHOO) held steady with a little more than 20 percent of the market.)

Its early and you would hope that MSN would gain some increased share because they spent $150 million dollars advertising the new MSN search engine. So I'm sure many people are now aware that Google isn't the only search player, but its hard to make people switch over in the long run.

I have seen an increase in traffic from all of my sites at MSN over the last month, so no doubt MSN is working better. They are a serious player and will give Google a run, but its hard to envision them getting that much more then the current 14.2% market share.  Either way, its important for all legal sites to be included in not only Yahoo and Google, but MSN Search.