MSN Search - Why Bother?

The latest search engine market share statistics offer no surprise as to who the search leader is (Google with 56.9% of the market), but at only 8.9%, the MSN market share seems somewhat weak especially given the hard-driven marketing effort Microsoft has undertaken lately.

However, there's another side to that. According to this article in Internet Retailer, (which cites ComScore), MSN users are the most likely to actually make a purchase ("48% more likely than the average Internet user to buy"), with Google following at 42% and Yahoo! trailing at 31%.

A lot of ecommerce marketers might look at MSN and say "why bother?". But these statistics seem to suggest that while MSN search lacks overall market share, the share that it does have may be of higher value for internet retailers. We might all grow old waiting for Microsoft to catch up with Google, but 3rd place in a market field as big as the internet is still pretty significant. I for one, will still be paying attention to MSN.