comScore Releases January 2012 U.S. Search Engine Rankings

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Feb 09, 2012, 04:32 ET

RESTON, Va., Feb. 9, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released its monthly comScore qSearch analysis of the U.S. search marketplace. Google Sites led the explicit core search market in January with 66.2 percent of search queries conducted.

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U.S. Explicit Core Search
Google Sites led the U.S. explicit core search market in January with 66.2 percent market share (up 0.3 percentage points), followed by Microsoft Sites with 15.2 percent (up 0.1 percentage points) and Yahoo! Sites with 14.1 percent. Ask Network accounted for 3.0 percent of explicit core searches, followed by AOL, Inc. with 1.6 percent.

comScore Explicit Core Search Share Report* January 2012 vs. December 2011 Total U.S. – Home & Work Locations Source: comScore qSearch
Core Search Entity	Explicit Core Search Share (%)
Core Search Entity	Dec-11	Jan-12	Point Change
Total Explicit Core Search	100.0%	100.0%	N/A
Google Sites	65.9%	66.2%	0.3
Microsoft Sites	15.1%	15.2%	0.1
Yahoo! Sites	14.5%	14.1%	-0.4
Ask Network	2.9%	3.0%	0.1
AOL, Inc.	1.6%	1.6%	0.0

*"Explicit Core Search" excludes contextually driven searches that do not reflect specific user intent to interact with the search results.

17.8 billion explicit core searches were conducted in January, with Google Sites ranking first with 11.8 billion. Microsoft Sites ranked second with 2.7 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2.5 billion, Ask Network with 527 million and AOL, Inc. with 277 million.

comScore Explicit Core Search Query Report January 2012 vs. December 2011 Total U.S. – Home & Work Locations Source: comScore qSearch
Core Search Entity	Explicit Core Search Queries (MM)
Core Search Entity	Dec-11	Jan-12	Percent Change
Total Explicit Core Search	18,235	17,804	-2%
Google Sites	12,019	11,786	-2%
Microsoft Sites	2,750	2,707	-2%
Yahoo! Sites	2,647	2,506	-5%
Ask Network	531	527	-1%
AOL, Inc.	287	277	-3%

U.S. Total Core Search
Google Sites accounted for 66.2 percent of total core search queries conducted (up 0.1 percentage points), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 16.0 percent and Microsoft Sites with 13.8 percent. Ask Network comprised 2.6 percent of total search queries, followed by AOL, Inc. with 1.4 percent.

comScore Total Core Search Share Report* January 2012 vs. December 2011 Total U.S. – Home & Work Locations Source: comScore qSearch
Core Search Entity	Total Core Search Share (%)
Core Search Entity	Dec-11	Jan-12	Point Change
Total Core Search	100.0%	100.0%	N/A
Google Sites	66.1%	66.2%	0.1
Yahoo! Sites	16.2%	16.0%	-0.2
Microsoft Sites	13.8%	13.8%	0.0
Ask Network	2.6%	2.6%	0.0
AOL, Inc.	1.4%	1.4%	0.0

* "Total Core Search" is based on the five major search engines, including partner searches, cross-channel searches and contextual 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 these numbers.

Americans conducted nearly 20 billion total core search queries in January. Google Sites ranked first with 13.2 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 3.2 billion and Microsoft Sites with 2.8 billion.

comScore Total Core Search Query Report January 2012 vs. December 2011 Total U.S. – Home & Work Locations Source: comScore qSearch
Core Search Entity	Total Core Search Queries (MM)
Core Search Entity	Dec-11	Jan-12	Percent Change
Total Core Search	20,525	19,975	-3%
Google Sites	13,560	13,218	-3%
Yahoo! Sites	3,318	3,191	-4%
Microsoft Sites	2,829	2,761	-2%
Ask Network	531	527	-1%
AOL, Inc.	287	277	-3%

"Powered By" Reporting
In January, 68.4 percent of searches carried organic search results from Google (vs. 68.1 percent in December) while 26.5 percent of searches were powered by Bing (no change vs. December).

About comScore
comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world and preferred source of digital business analytics. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com/companyinfo.

SOURCE comScore, Inc.