San Francisco — comScore, Inc., leader in tracking the digital world, last week released its monthly comScore qSearch analysis of the U.S. search marketplace, which indicates that search engine giant Google, Inc. continues to lead the U.S. core Web search rankings in February 2009, while rival Yahoo! stood a distant second, according to figures released by comScore.
Americans performed 13.1 billion searches at the core search engines during February 2009, a decline of 3% from 13.5 million searches performed in the previous month, the majority of searches were carried out via Google sites, according to data from comScore. The decline is primarily due to the fact that February was a short month.
February 2009 U.S. Core Search Rankings:
Google sites handled 8.3 billion core searches in February, down from 8.5 billion core searches conducted in the previous month. Mountain View, California-based Google increased its share of the core search marketplace to 63.3% in February from 63.0% in January.
Yahoo and Microsoft finished out the top three, with Yahoo! Sites (20.6%), Microsoft Sites (8.2%) respectively, while Ask Network (4.1%) and AOL LLC (3.9%).
| comScore Core Search Report* February 2009 vs. January 2009 Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations Source: comScore qSearch 2.0 | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
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| Total Core Search | 100.0 | 100.0 | N/A | ||||||||
| Google Sites | 63.0 | 63.3 | .03 | ||||||||
| Yahoo! Sites | 21.0 | 20.6 | -0.4 | ||||||||
| Microsoft Sites | 8.5 | 8.2 | -0.3 | ||||||||
| Ask Network | 3.7 | 4.1 | 0.4 | ||||||||
| AOL LLC | 3.9 | 3.9 | 0 | ||||||||
* 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.
Google’s YouTube video sharing site and other Web properties like mapping, local directories, and other “expanded” searches, managed to capture 11.3 billion searches, down 4 percent from January. Yahoo had 2.8 billion searches, Microsoft had 1.1 billion, and AOL had 761 million.
Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo, which last year succeeded in fending off a hostile takeover bid from Microsoft, continued to retain the number two overall U.S. core search ranking during February, with its sites combining to represent 20.6% of all searches, a decrease from the 21.0% it saw during January. Yahoo saw a 5% decrease in the number of searches performed on its sites during February to 2.7 billion, according to the comScore figures.
In the comScore February 2009 analysis of the top properties where search activity is tracked, Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft, the world’s biggest software maker, witnessed its search sites continued to remain in the number three spot during February. Overall February traffic to Microsoft’s search sites declined 6% to 1.1 billion searches.
Google shares during Friday’s regular trading session closed at $324.42, up 89 cents, while Yahoo! shares closed at $13.51, down 9 cents and Microsoft shares closed at $16.65, down 36 cents.