Monday 2nd March 2015

San Francisco, CA & Dublin, Ireland; Monday 2nd March 2015: Yahoo's recent growth in US search share came to a halt in February but it has largely maintained the gains it made over January and December, according to data from independent website analytics provider, StatCounter.

StatCounter Global Stats reports that in February, Google took 74.9% of US search referrals followed by Bing on 12.5% and Yahoo on 10.7%, down marginally from 10.9% the previous month.

"While Yahoo's search growth from the Mozilla deal has stalled, its share declined only slightly in February," commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. "It will be interesting to see if January was the month of peak impact for Yahoo as a result of the Mozilla deal and whether it can maintain its gains over the next few months."

StatCounter separately analysed search share by US Firefox users only. It found that in February for the US Google-on-Firefox was at 65.1% (up from 63.9% in January); Yahoo-on-Firefox usage was at 27.3% (down from 28.3%) and Bing-on-Firefox was at 5.9% (down from 6.2%).

StatCounter says that it was not just Firefox users that led to the small decline. Yahoo usage in the US excluding Firefox users was also down slightly from 8.2% in January to 8.1% in February.

Firefox users generated 14% of US internet usage in February according to StatCounter, whose main business is to provide independent website analytics, including a free option.

StatCounter (www.statcounter.com) members include companies, agencies, bloggers, self-employed, charities and those who want to measure activity on their website, blog or forum. Key features include ease of use, independence and ability to view individual visitors in real time.

StatCounter Global Stats data is based on over 15 billion page views per month to over three million websites. Further info is available here: https://gs.statcounter.com/faq

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For interview with Aodhan Cullen, photo or press queries:
Ronnie Simpson, Simpson Consulting PR
E:ronnie@simpsonconsulting.ie T:+353 1 260 5300