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We’ve posted the August 2008 Search Market Share report based on Quantcast’s data over on SEO Theory. There is some interesting data coming out of the August reports.

Cuil has established a search audience

While naive reporters are writing off Cuil as a failure, it’s obvious from the search market share reports that Web searchers continue to use the engine significant numbers. Compete estimates 1 million August visitors to Cuil and Quantcast estimates 700,000 visitors. Cuil thus takes 16th place on both reports (ahead of Hakia, another new search engine).

Snap and Nextag are challenging the Top Five Search Engines

According to Quantcast’s estimates, Snap is now the fifth most used search service in the United States. Nextag is sixth. Using Compete’s data, Nextag and Snap take the seventh and eighth positions respectively (but if we consider MSN/Live to be one service, then Nextag and Snap are sixth and seventh).

There is, of course, a huge disparity between the two metrics services regarding Nextag’s traffic (which could in fact be much lower than they estimate). If we look at Alexa’s estimates, Snap seems to be overtaking Nextag by leaps and bounds, which seems to agree with the growth reported by both Quantcast and Compete.

Snap is thus a search engine to watch in the next few months. If it can overtake Ask, then it may be able to challenge Yahoo! for the third position.

Microsoft remains the second most visited search engine

Quantcast estimates slight declines in traffic for Microsoft’s search properties while Compete estimates slight increases for MSN and Live (keep in mind that search.msn.com receives only a fraction of MSN.com’s traffic). Alexa estimates that Live.com receives more traffic than MSN.com but also shows a steady increase in Microsoft’s traffic.

It may be that Microsoft’s cash-for-search initiatives, coupled with their disengagement from the disruptive Yahoo! acquisition scheme, may have inspired some searchers to take a second look at the search engine. Another factor to consider is that Microsoft began updating its search index after the Yahoo! bid fell through.

Google continues to lose traffic

Looking at trend charts from Alexa, Compete, and Quantcast, it’s appear that Google’s estimated traffic is down from earlier this year. Of the three metrics services, only Compete estimates a slight increase for Google over last month.

For many U.S. Web marketers Google remains the search engine to dominate and I doubt the August search market share reports will be a wake-up call for many people. Nonetheless, there are clear trends emerging from the data that indicate Google’s reign as King of the Search Engines may have peaked. If the trends hold up, Microsoft may become the most visited search destination by early next year and Snap may become the third or fourth most popular search destination.

How to leverage changes in search market share

It is much more difficult to invade a query space after everyone else has started optimizing for it. For the present time most search engine optimizers and Web marketers are focused on Google because of the inflated search market share estimates that Compete, comScore, Hitwise, and Nielsen publish (they measure market share by number of queries). That means it should be easier to optimize for competitive queries in other search engines.

If you haven’t been paying attention to Nextag (a comparison shopping search engine) or Snap (a general purpose search engine) — or Microsoft search — you need to. You have a rapidly closing window of opportunity to position your sites.

Optimizing for comparison shopping, of course, is a very different process from optimizing for Web search. Retailers need to be reasonable about their marketing campaigns, but if you haven’t built a channel around Nextag referrals, you should give it some thought.

If you’re not receiving traffic from these other search services, stop and ask yourself why before writing them off. You could be overlooking something important. The only reason not to optimize for a search engine is that it doesn’t generate traffic relevant to your content. If you don’t know how people search anywhere but Google, you’re at a serious competitive disadvantage.