In the past week or so, tech enthusiasts from around the world were astonished to witness a new report by Statcounter indicating Google’s massive market share loss in April of 2024.
This was not only related to American markets but global ones too and it was from March to April of this year.
But it soon turned out that the reality was far from that and in fact, some sort of bug had taken over with Statcounter updating information this past weekend.
Experts including, Glenn Gabe, knew something was wrong with the data from the start and they were quick to call out the information as inaccurate. Gabe, even posted stories about this fiasco and confusion.
Now, StatCounter has opted to revise its own data which at first proved that Google’s American market share fell to a new low of 77.5% last month while it had reported 86.9% in the month before that. Thankfully, the latest data shows otherwise with figures hitting back to 86.5%.
It was also news to many people’s ears in the tech world when Statcounter went as far as to give Microsoft’s Bing the leading position with a massive growth of 13% which meant it went up from 8% seen in the past month. And if that was not enough, it inaccurately displayed how tech giant Yahoo went from 2.4% to 7.3% in March alone. Now, with the right changes in place, it stands at 2.6%.
We’re glad to witness global reports not experiencing such a massive turnaround of figures but those became updated with time too. So what do critics and analysts have to say about the erroneous reporting?
For starters, seeing is not always believing. To even begin to imagine that a search engine giant like Google could experience this much loss in just a month was a little hard to handle for many. But some did hope the figures were right as it was a major shakeup and that’s not something you see often with Google.
For now, Statcounter is still investigating the matter and reviewing all market shares delineated for April 2024. So the picture is still incomplete right now. We can therefore see changes in data in up to 40 days from now as revision and quality testing continue to take center stage.
Read next: Q1 2024 Smartphone Sales: Apple and Samsung Reign Supreme in Global Market
This was not only related to American markets but global ones too and it was from March to April of this year.
But it soon turned out that the reality was far from that and in fact, some sort of bug had taken over with Statcounter updating information this past weekend.
Experts including, Glenn Gabe, knew something was wrong with the data from the start and they were quick to call out the information as inaccurate. Gabe, even posted stories about this fiasco and confusion.
Now, StatCounter has opted to revise its own data which at first proved that Google’s American market share fell to a new low of 77.5% last month while it had reported 86.9% in the month before that. Thankfully, the latest data shows otherwise with figures hitting back to 86.5%.
It was also news to many people’s ears in the tech world when Statcounter went as far as to give Microsoft’s Bing the leading position with a massive growth of 13% which meant it went up from 8% seen in the past month. And if that was not enough, it inaccurately displayed how tech giant Yahoo went from 2.4% to 7.3% in March alone. Now, with the right changes in place, it stands at 2.6%.
We’re glad to witness global reports not experiencing such a massive turnaround of figures but those became updated with time too. So what do critics and analysts have to say about the erroneous reporting?
From our data (Search Engine website category, US, March 2024) it doesn't look like we're there yet: pic.twitter.com/RBUJp4ZLeb
— Similarweb (@Similarweb) May 1, 2024
For starters, seeing is not always believing. To even begin to imagine that a search engine giant like Google could experience this much loss in just a month was a little hard to handle for many. But some did hope the figures were right as it was a major shakeup and that’s not something you see often with Google.
For now, Statcounter is still investigating the matter and reviewing all market shares delineated for April 2024. So the picture is still incomplete right now. We can therefore see changes in data in up to 40 days from now as revision and quality testing continue to take center stage.
Read next: Q1 2024 Smartphone Sales: Apple and Samsung Reign Supreme in Global Market
