Google Gets three quarters of All Paid Search Clicks

Google is the clear leader on the spending side too, but the company’s 74.5% share is actually down year on year. For the year, Yahoo fluctuated throughout the year but ended Q4 at 20.4% of spend, the same as Q4 2008, while Bing grew 25% from Q4 2008 to Q4 2009.

The report offers an overall positive outlook on search engine advertising. Efficient Frontier report that the retail sector led a strong Q4 2009 that was up 6% from quarter to quarter as well year on year. Retail advertisers spent 17% more in Q4 than they did a year earlier, but retail CPC was down 9% from Q4 2008 levels. Experimentation with new ad formatting may be the reason that this cost per click has gone down.

Looking ahead, Efficient Frontier is optimistic for 2010. The company expects that a “moderate amount of CPC growth will accelerate growth in Q1 and throughout 2010,” and that “2010 spend growth will exceed earlier estimates of 10-15%.” The report also predicts solid growth for Bing in 2010, saying that a 30% gain is possible, which would put Bing between 6-7% of click share by the end of the year.