Instead, economists know that we need to see a trend that covers many months, with many data points pointing the same way.

Im not an economist, but even I can grasp that Nielsens data"showing Google losing market share to Yahoo"should be viewed as an outlier, until we see an ongoing trend.

The data in question shows Google losing 1.3% in search share from June to July, while Yahoo picked up about 0.8% of that share.

Heres June:

And heres July:

Perhaps one of the most intriguing stats is that Google actually grew its search audience from 6.6 million to 6.8 million. Thats hardly a decline"at least the last time I checked. So, rather than saying that Google has lost market share to Yahoo, perhaps its more accurate to say that 500,000+ new searches were conducted in July, with Yahoo doing a better job of attracting them than Google.

A better job, based on existing market share that is. Break those numbers down further and youll see that Google picked up about 198k new searches, with Yahoo just behind with 176k.

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