How Do the Search Engines Stack Up?

Did you ever wonder which search engines are used most for shopping search? What about for entertainment or news? A new report detailing behaviors associated with search engine use has been released by Hitwise. This report identifies clear strengths for each search engine. Such as; AskJeeves is most used for shopping and classified search; Yahoo is used most frequently for entertainment and news. Google is still #1 in visit market share at 39.34% with Yahoo coming in #2 with 18.16%.

I know people who never use anything but Google. I personally use Yahoo for most everything, only going to Google when I don’t find what I want at Yahoo. I like the portal approach and organization Yahoo uses and feel I find things faster because of it. What about you? Which search engine do you use, for what, and why? And more importantly, which do your customers use? Do your optimization efforts reflect that?