Google still King of Search
Research from Nielsen/NetRatings showed that in June, 2.67 billion web searches were carried out on Google: that’s nearly half of all searches.
Yahoo had about half of that, with 1.24 billion (23%) searches, followed by MSN (10.3%) and AOL (6.9%). Bit players in the equation included Ask.com and My Way, with 2% share between them – though they showed a net increase in usage – and 90s favourite Netscape, Dogpile, iWon and Earthlink losing searches.
Meantime, Google has built a search engine to prioritise results that are accessible to visually-impaired web users, to praise from charities including the RNIB.
The project is thanks to new recruit TV Raman whose objective is "to develop technologies that drive the future of the web toward eyes-free, ubiquitous information access."
Julie Howell, RNIB’s Digital Policy Development Manager, said: "What’s fantastic is that a company like Google thinks accessibility is important." She added that Google has always had a good user interface for visually impaired users. "Blind and partially sighted people reported to RNIB from the start that Google was their favourite search engine." It is the simplicity that appealed.
