Search Engines Losing Traction as Social Media Heats Up (GOOG) (FB) (TWTR) (MSFT)

Is social media beginning to eat search engine's lunch?

According to the latest data from Sharesholic, the answer might be "yes."

Raw data show that Google accounted for 37.49 percent of search traffic to websites in December 2013. That amount fell 17.2 percent to 31.04 percent last month. The same could be said for Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO), Microsoft's Bing (Nasdaq: MSFT), and AOL (NYSE: AOL), which all had declines of around 30 percent.

Many businesses are diversifying how they connect with customers and are seen on the web. This deepens engagement and also prevents a traffic hiatus should Google decide to alter its search algorithms.

That's good news for the likes of Twitter (NYSE: TWTR), Facebook (Nasdaq: FB), LinkedIn (NYSE: LNKD), and others.

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