"By providing search results that are highly relevant to the content being consumed by a user, properties like MSN and Yahoo can provide intuitive and convenient content-discovery experiences," wrote Cameron Meierhoefer in a comScore blog. "Also, by providing search results in context across their network 
, those sites are able to leverage the size of their audience to expose more users to their search services."
A Mixed Verdict
Some industry observers have questioned the wisdom of including contextual searches as part of comScore's monthly totals, since they are offered to search users without being requested specifically. For example, an investment commentary at The Motley Fool called comScore's practice of counting them in its reports "a sham."
The web-metrics firm says it recognizes that context-driven searches are inherently different experiences compared to traditional web search queries and intends to refine its methodology accordingly. "We will aim to implement proposed revisions in the third quarter -- ideally starting with the release of July data in the first half of August," Meierhoefer wrote.
According to Net Applications, which said it doesn't differentiate standard search referrals from context-driven searches, Google racked up a 84.96 percent global market share in June, more than a percentage point lower than in April.
"We do agree that Google's competition is gaining some ground in the last few months," said Net Applications Executive Vice President Vince Vizzaccaro. "The reason could be that Bing's marketing efforts are starting to succeed, or perhaps people are starting to become more aware of Google's privacy problems."
Vizzaccaro also noted that the data compiled by Net Applications is derived by tracking all the traffic and unique visitors from a large sample of web sites. "Unless comScore can ensure the technologies in use by their sample already accurately resemble the true market -- which I don't believe they can -- I believe our methodology to be more reliable and accurate," Vizzaccaro said.
Cautiously Optimistic
Hitwise, which bases its data on a sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users, reported last week that Google accounted for 71.65 percent of all U.S. searches conducted in the four weeks ending June 26, followed by Yahoo and Bing at 14.37 percent and 9.85 percent, respectively. The online competitive intelligence service also said Bing's market share increased 7 percent.
Efficient Frontier said it remains cautiously optimistic about the continuing rollout of the Microsoft-Yahoo search partnership. "In the long run, we believe that the integration will bring small advertisers on board the unified platform," said the company, which provides search and display optimization for large-scale marketers around the globe. "However, we are uncertain of the short-term effects."
Currently, the unified Microsoft and Yahoo stance is that advertisers will only be allowed to place the same bids across both search engines, Efficient Frontier noted.
"Due to the very different return on investment (ROI) across Yahoo and Bing, we feel this will be detrimental to advertisers because the high ROI on Bing will subsidize the lower ROI on Yahoo," Efficient Frontier explained. "The net effect could be suppressed cost-per-clicks, dampening the impact of greater demand."
