comScore Releases December 2009 U.S. Search Engine Rankings

RESTON, Va., Jan. 15 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- comScore, Inc. (Nasdaq: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released its monthly comScore qSearch analysis of the U.S. search marketplace. In December 2009, Americans conducted 14.7 billion core searches, with Google Sites accounting for 65.7 percent search market share, virtually unchanged from 65.6 percent in November. Microsoft Sites grabbed 10.7 percent market share, up 0.4 percentage points versus November.

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December 2009 U.S. Core Search Rankings

Google Sites led the U.S. core search market in December with 65.7 percent of the searches conducted, followed by Yahoo! Sites (17.3 percent), and Microsoft Sites (10.7 percent). Ask Network captured 3.7 percent of the search market, followed by AOL LLC with 2.6 percent.

* Based on the five major search engines including partner searches and cross-channel searches. Searches for mapping, local directory, and user-generated video sites that are not on the core domain of the five search engines are not included in the core search numbers.

Americans conducted 14.7 billion searches in December, up 2 percent from November. Google Sites accounted for nearly 9.7 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites (2.5 billion), Microsoft Sites (1.6 billion), Ask Network (545 million) and AOL LLC (383 million).

* Based on the five major search engines including partner searches and cross-channel searches. Searches for mapping, local directory, and user-generated video sites that are not on the core domain of the five search engines are not included in the core search numbers.

December 2009 U.S. Expanded Search Rankings

In the December analysis of the top properties where search activity is observed, Google Sites led the search market with more than 14.0 billion search queries, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2.6 billion queries and Microsoft Sites with 1.6 billion searches. Bing experienced large growth during the month with a 6-percent increase in query volume to nearly 1.4 billion searches. eBay and Amazon Sites experienced gains in December as retail search activity picked up during the holiday season.

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SOURCE comScore, Inc.