comScore Releases April 2011 U.S. Search Engine Rankings

RESTON, VA, May 11, 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 April with 65.4 percent of search queries conducted.

The April 2011 qSearch data reflect the impact of Yahoo! Search Direct, Yahoo!’s new feature that delivers search results in real-time while users type their query. Yahoo! Search Direct was available only on Yahoo! U.S. Web Search for the month of April.

U.S. Explicit Core Search

Google Sites led the U.S. explicit core search market in April with 65.4 percent market share, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 15.9 percent (up 0.2 percentage points) and Microsoft Sites with 14.1 percent (up 0.2 percentage points). Ask Network accounted for 3.0 percent of explicit core searches, followed by AOL, Inc. with 1.5 percent.

comScore Explicit Core Search Share Report*
April 2011 vs. March 2011
Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations
Source: comScore qSearch
Core Search Entity Explicit Core Search Share (%)
Mar-11 Apr-11 Point Change
Total Explicit Core Search 100.0% 100.0% N/A
Google Sites 65.7% 65.4% -0.3
Yahoo! Sites 15.7% 15.9% 0.2
Microsoft Sites 13.9% 14.1% 0.2
Ask Network 3.1% 3.0% -0.1
AOL, Inc. 1.6% 1.5% -0.1

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

More than 16.2 billion explicit core searches were conducted in April. Google Sites ranked first with 10.7 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2.6 billion, Microsoft Sites with 2.3 billion, Ask Network with 491 million and AOL, Inc. with 248 million.

comScore Explicit Core Search Query Report
April 2011 vs. March 2011
Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations
Source: comScore qSearch
Core Search Entity Explicit Core Search Queries (MM)
Mar-11 Apr-11 Percent Change
Total Explicit Core Search 16,940 16,277 -4%
Google Sites 11,123 10,652 -4%
Yahoo! Sites 2,662 2,584 -3%
Microsoft Sites 2,362 2,301 -3%
Ask Network 520 491 -6%
AOL, Inc. 272 248 -9%

U.S. Total Core Search

Google Sites accounted for 64.2 percent of total core search queries conducted (up 0.1 percentage points), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 17.9 percent and Microsoft Sites with 13.8 percent (up 0.2 percentage points). Ask Network comprised 2.7 percent of total search queries, followed by AOL, Inc. with 1.4 percent.

comScore Total Core Search Share Report*
April 2011 vs. March 2011
Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations
Source: comScore qSearch
Core Search Entity Total Core Search Share (%)
Mar-11 Apr-11 Point Change
Total Core Search 100.0% 100.0% N/A
Google Sites 64.1% 64.2% 0.1
Yahoo! Sites 18.0% 17.9% -0.1
Microsoft Sites 13.6% 13.8% 0.2
Ask Network 2.8% 2.7% -0.1
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 more than 18.0 billion total core search queries in April. Google Sites ranked first with 11.6 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 3.2 billion and Microsoft Sites with 2.5 billion.

comScore Total Core Search Query Report
April 2011 vs. March 2011
Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations
Source: comScore qSearch
Core Search Entity Total Core Search Queries (MM)
Mar-11 Apr-11 Percent Change
Total Core Search 18,886 18,089 -4%
Google Sites 12,113 11,609 -4%
Yahoo! Sites 3,405 3,239 -5%
Microsoft Sites 2,576 2,501 -3%
Ask Network 520 491 -6%
AOL, Inc. 272 248 -9%

“Powered By” Reporting

In order to accurately represent the continued evolution of the search landscape, comScore is providing insight into the share of algorithmic explicit searches that are powered by Google and Bing, and branded as such to the consumer. Google’s “powered by” share is composed of searches conducted at Google entities, as well as branded searches at AOL and Ask. Bing’s “powered by” share is composed of searches conducted at Microsoft entities as well as branded Yahoo! entities.

In April, 67.8 percent of searches carried organic search results from Google, while 26.5 percent of searches were powered by Bing organic results.

*Source: comScore

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