A report released today by AdGooroo indicates that Google had huge fourth quarter advertiser gains, while Yahoo! continued to lose advertiser share.

“Google’s active advertiser count is a whopping 54.9% higher than it was in the fourth quarter of 2007, and this runs counter to what we hear in the marketplace today,” said AdGooroo Founder and Chief Gooroo Rich Stokes. “Some of this growth can be attributed to general year-over-year growth in consumer search usage, but Google has clearly adjusted their algorithm to serve more ads to consumers in each search in order to generate this impressive growth in first-page advertisers.”

Other significant findings contained in the report include:

• Microsoft increased its share of advertisers by an estimated 11.5% from Q3 2008.
• Although Yahoo! increased its active advertiser count, its U.S. and international share of advertisers dropped from 30.4% in September to 20.4% in November.
• Q4 2008 may be the strongest quarter on record for both Google and Microsoft.

The Mid-Quarter Search Engine Update (Q408) can be downloaded from the AdGooroo Research Library for free.