comScore Releases May 2011 U.S. Search Engine Rankings

RESTON, VA, June 10, 2011 – comScore, Inc., 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 May with 65.5 percent of search queries conducted.

The May 2011 qSearch data represents the second month of results including the impact of Yahoo! Search Direct, Yahoo!’s new feature that delivers search results in real-time while users type their query.

U.S. Explicit Core Search

Google Sites led the U.S. explicit core search market in May with 65.5 percent market share (up 0.1 percentage points), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 15.9 percent and Microsoft Sites with 14.1 percent. Ask Network accounted for 2.9 percent of explicit core searches, followed by AOL, Inc. with 1.5 percent.

comScore Explicit Core Search Share Report*
May 2011 vs. April 2011
Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations
Source: comScore qSearch
Core Search Entity Explicit Core Search Share (%)
Apr-11 May-11 Point Change
Total Explicit Core Search 100.0% 100.0% N/A
Google Sites 65.4% 65.5% 0.1
Yahoo! Sites 15.9% 15.9% 0.0
Microsoft Sites 14.1% 14.1% 0.0
Ask Network 3.0% 2.9% -0.1
AOL, Inc. 1.5% 1.5% 0.0

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

More than 17.0 billion explicit core searches were conducted in May (up 5 percent versus April). Google Sites ranked first with 11.2 billion searches (up 5 percent), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2.7 billion (up 5 percent), Microsoft Sites with 2.4 billion (up 4 percent), Ask Network with 502 million (up 2 percent) and AOL, Inc. with 254 million (up 2 percent).

comScore Explicit Core Search Query Report
May 2011 vs. April 2011
Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations
Source: comScore qSearch
Core Search Entity Explicit Core Search Queries (MM)
Apr-11 May-11 Percent Change
Total Explicit Core Search 16,277 17,024 5%
Google Sites 10,652 11,155 5%
Yahoo! Sites 2,584 2,711 5%
Microsoft Sites 2,301 2,402 4%
Ask Network 491 502 2%
AOL, Inc. 248 254 2%

U.S. Total Core Search

Google Sites accounted for 63.3 percent of total core search queries conducted, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 19.6 percent (up 1.7 percentage points) and Microsoft Sites with 13.1 percent. Ask Network comprised 2.6 percent of total search queries, followed by AOL, Inc. with 1.3 percent.

comScore Total Core Search Share Report*
May 2011 vs. April 2011
Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations
Source: comScore qSearch
Core Search Entity Total Core Search Share (%)
Apr-11 May-11 Point Change
Total Core Search 100.0% 100.0% N/A
Google Sites 64.2% 63.3% -0.9
Yahoo! Sites 17.9% 19.6% 1.7
Microsoft Sites 13.8% 13.1% -0.7
Ask Network 2.7% 2.6% -0.1
AOL, Inc. 1.4% 1.3% -0.1

* “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 19.3 billion total core search queries in May (up 7 percent). Google Sites ranked first with 12.2 billion searches (up 5 percent), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 3.8 billion (up 17 percent) and Microsoft Sites with 2.5 billion (up 1 percent).

comScore Total Core Search Query Report
May 2011 vs. April 2011
Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations
Source: comScore qSearch
Core Search Entity Total Core Search Queries (MM)
Apr-11 May-11 Percent Change
Total Core Search 18,089 19,269 7%
Google Sites 11,609 12,204 5%
Yahoo! Sites 3,239 3,786 17%
Microsoft Sites 2,501 2,522 1%
Ask Network 491 502 2%
AOL, Inc. 248 254 2%

“Powered By” Reporting

As a part of comScore’s commitment to accurately represent the continued evolution of the search landscape, comScore is providing insight into the share of organic Core Explicit searches that are powered by Google and Bing.

In May, 67.8 percent of searches carried organic search results from Google, which is flat month over month. 26.5 percent of searches were powered by Bing, which is also flat month over month.

*Source: comScore

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