Google sites in US account for most of the searches

US Google sites accounted for two-thirds of 131 billion searches conducted worldwide in December, said a recent report by comScore, a global research company specialised in measuring digital media.

ComScore's study posted on the website, www.comscore.com, on growth in the global search market in 2009 revealed that the US remained the largest search market worldwide, while Google webites retained a commanding position in the global search market.

"The global search market continues to grow at an extraordinary rate, with both highly developed and emerging markets contributing to the strong growth worldwide," said Jack Flanagan, comScore Executive Vice-President.

"Search is clearly becoming a more ubiquitous behavior among Internet users that drives navigation not only directly from search engines but also within sites and across networks. If you equate the advancement of search with the ability of humans to cultivate information, then the world is rapidly becoming a more knowledgeable ecosystem."

The total worldwide search market boasted more than 131 billion searches conducted by people age 15 or older from home and work locations in December 2009, representing an increase of 46 per cent in the past year.

According to comScore, this number represents more than 4 billion searches per day, 175 million per hour, and 29 million per minute.

The US represented the largest individual search market in the world with 22.7 billion searches, or approximately 17 per cent of searches conducted globally. China ranked second with 13.3 billion searches, followed by Japan with 9.2 billion and the UK with 6.2 billion. Among the top ten global search markets, Russia posted the highest gains in 2009, growing 92 per cent to 3.3 billion, followed by France, which saw growth by 61 per cent to 5.4 billion and Brazil up 53 per cent to 3.8 billion.

Google Sites ranked as the top search property worldwide with 87.8 billion searches in December, or 66.8 per cent of the global search market. Google Sites achieved an increase of 58 per cent in search query volume over the past year. Yahoo! Sites ranked second globally with 9.4 billion searches witnessing a growth of 13 per cent, followed by Chinese search engine Baidu with 8.5 billion searches (up seven per cent). Microsoft Sites saw the greatest gains among the top five properties, growing 70 per cent to 4.1 billion searches, on the strength of its introduction of the new search engine Bing. Russian search engine Yandex also achieved considerable gains, growing 91 per cent to 1.9 billion searches.

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