RESTON, VA, September 12, 2012 – 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 August with 66.4 percent of search queries conducted.
U.S. Explicit Core Search
Google Sites led the U.S. explicit core search market in August with 66.4 percent market share, followed by Microsoft Sites with 15.9 percent and Yahoo! Sites with 12.8 percent. Ask Network accounted for 3.2 percent of explicit core searches, followed by AOL, Inc. with 1.7 percent.
Comscore Explicit Core Search Share Report*August 2012 Total U.S. – Home & Work LocationsSource: Comscore qSearch
Core Search Entity
Explicit Core Search Share (%)
Aug-12
Total Explicit Core Search
100.0%
Google Sites
66.4%
Microsoft Sites
15.9%
Yahoo! Sites
12.8%
Ask Network
3.2%
AOL, Inc.
1.7%
*“Explicit Core Search” excludes contextually driven searches that do not reflect specific user intent to interact with the search results.
More than 17 billion explicit core searches were conducted in August, with Google Sites ranking first with 11.3 billion. Microsoft Sites ranked second with 2.7 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2.2 billion, Ask Network with 550 million and AOL, Inc. with 292 million.
Comscore Explicit Core Search Query ReportAugust 2012 Total U.S. – Home & Work LocationsSource: Comscore qSearch
Explicit Core Search Queries (MM)
17,046
11,317
2,710
2,177
550
292
“Powered By” Reporting
In August, 68.8 percent of searches carried organic search results from Google, while 25.3 percent of searches were powered by Bing.
A Note about August 2012 qSearch Reporting
With the release of August 2012 U.S. qSearch data, Comscore introduced two important methodological enhancements to our estimates that will affect qSearch data on a go-forward basis. The first enhancement is the incorporation of updated demographic universe estimates based on data from the 2010 U.S. census, which provides an improved accounting of the percentage of the population falling into each demographic segment. The second enhancement was an improvement in Comscore’s enumeration survey methodology to better represent persons in cell-phone only households.
Due to the effects of the changes to the August 2012 U.S. qSearch data, Comscore’s monthly qSearch press release will limit public reporting to the standard current month rankings and will exclude the month-over-month changes, which include the effects of inorganic increases or declines due to the methodological enhancements. The qSearch press release will resume normal reporting of month-over-month changes with the release of September 2012 data.
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Contact:Adam LellaComscore, Inc.+1 (312) 775-6474press@comscore.com