comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), has released its monthly comScore qSearch analysis of the United States search marketplace. In May 2009, Americans conducted 14.3 billion core searches.
Google’s websites continued to lead the US search market in April 2009 with 65.0 percent of the searches conducted, followed by Yahoo! (20.1 percent), Microsoft (8.0 percent), Ask Network (3.9 percent) and AOL LLC (3.1 percent). Here are the official numbers, as reported by comScore:
comScore Core Search Report*
May 2009 vs. April 2009
Total U.S. - Home/Work/University Locations
Source: comScore qSearch
Share of Searches (%)
Point
Change
May-09 vs.
Core Search Entity Apr-09 May-09 Apr-09
Total Core Search 100.0 100.0 N/A
Google Sites 64.2 65.0 0.8
Yahoo! Sites 20.4 20.1 -0.3
Microsoft Sites** 8.2 8.0 -0.2
Ask Network 3.8 3.9 0.1
AOL LLC 3.4 3.1 -0.3
* 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.
** May data does not include search activity at Microsoft Bing, which was launched on June 1. Microsoft Bing will be included with June qSearch data.
comScore says that “Americans conducted 14.3 billion searches at the core search engines. Google Sites accounted for 9.3 billion core searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2.9 billion and Microsoft Sites with 1.1 billion.”
comScore Core Search Report*
May 2009 vs. April 2009
Total U.S. - Home/Work/University Locations
Source: comScore qSearch
Search Queries (MM)
Percent
Change
May-09 vs.
Core Search Entity Apr-09 May-09 Apr-09
Total Core Search 14,751 14,327 -3
Google Sites 9,476 9,307 -2
Yahoo! Sites 3,008 2,877 -4
Microsoft Sites** 1,208 1,149 -5
Ask Network 563 555 -1
AOL LLC 496 438 -12
* 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.
** May data does not include search activity at Microsoft Bing, which was launched on June 1. Microsoft Bing will be included with June qSearch data.
From what is noted above, these numbers do not include the new search engine “Bing” (bing.com owned by Microsoft), as we’re actually seeing a decrease in the numbers from April 2009 to May 2009. What will be interesting is next month’s report from comScore, which will show the true impact of Microsoft launching the new Bing.com search engine.