NP: Mike Keneally Band, Guitar Therapy Live

The New York Times' Bits blog touts some recent numbers that suggest that the "search wars" are actually a bit closer than many people think. According to comScore, 73 percent of Internet users avail themselves of Yahoo or Microsoft, compared to 84 percent for Google. Where Google gains its huge advantage is the share of total searches, which, for those of you bad at math, means that Google searchers search more often. The conclusion of the piece, and of my buddy Eli Goodman over at comScore, is that Yahoo and Microsoft need to make their search services more compelling in order to convert "light searchers" to "heavy searchers."

If I were to venture a guess, I'd say that a lot of this is driven by Yahoo mail and Hotmail users who search out of their mail interface, and that this is probably a bigger factor than some sort of inherent searcher behavior. I've seen survey results about search engine preference that seem pretty obviously skewed by e-mail provider -- namely that older Internet users are much more likely to cite MSN or AOL as their search engine of choice -- and I have to imagine that, if someone wants to search something while they're on their mail page, they'll enter that search in the first available search box that they see.

There's maybe a broader story here that also involves toolbars and browser-based search boxes, but my gut is really strong on this. I'd love to see comScore somehow cross their numbers by e-mail provider, and might just drop my contacts at comScore a line to see if he can pull it off.