comScore Releases December 2011 U.S. Search Engine Rankings::Brought to you by TechWeb

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comScore Releases December 2011 U.S. Search Engine Rankings
Jan 11, 2012 (03:01 PM EST)

RESTON, Va., Jan. 11, 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 December with 65.9 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 December with 65.9 percent market share (up 0.5 percentage points), followed by Microsoft Sites with 15.1 percent (up 0.1 percentage points) and Yahoo! Sites with 14.5 percent. Ask Network accounted for 2.9 percent of explicit core searches, followed by AOL, Inc. with 1.6 percent.

comScore Explicit Core Search Share Report* December 2011 vs. November 2011 Total U.S. – Home & Work Locations Source: comScore qSearch
Core Search Entity	Explicit Core Search Share (%)
Core Search Entity	Nov-11	Dec-11	Point Change
Total Explicit Core Search	100.0%	100.0%	N/A
Google Sites	65.4%	65.9%	0.5
Microsoft Sites	15.0%	15.1%	0.1
Yahoo! Sites	15.1%	14.5%	-0.6
Ask Network	2.9%	2.9%	0.0
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.

More than 18.2 billion explicit core searches were conducted in December (up 2 percent). Google Sites ranked first with 12 billion (up 3 percent), followed by Microsoft Sites with 2.7 billion (up 2 percent) and Yahoo! Sites with 2.6 billion. Ask Network delivered 531 million searches (up 3 percent), while AOL, Inc. rounded out the top five with 287 million.

comScore Explicit Core Search Query Report December 2011 vs. November 2011 Total U.S. – Home & Work Locations Source: comScore qSearch
Core Search Entity	Explicit Core Search Queries (MM)
Core Search Entity	Nov-11	Dec-11	Percent Change
Total Explicit Core Search	17,887	18,235	2%
Google Sites	11,704	12,019	3%
Microsoft Sites	2,684	2,750	2%
Yahoo! Sites	2,696	2,647	-2%
Ask Network	516	531	3%
AOL, Inc.	286	287	0%

U.S. Total Core Search

Google Sites accounted for 66.1 percent of total core search queries conducted (up 0.4 percentage points), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 16.2 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* December 2011 vs. November 2011 Total U.S. – Home & Work Locations Source: comScore qSearch
Core Search Entity	Total Core Search Share (%)
Core Search Entity	Nov-11	Dec-11	Point Change
Total Core Search	100.0%	100.0%	N/A
Google Sites	65.7%	66.1%	0.4
Yahoo! Sites	16.3%	16.2%	-0.1
Microsoft Sites	14.0%	13.8%	-0.2
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 20.5 billion total core search queries in December (up 3 percent). Google Sites ranked first with 13.6 billion searches (up 4 percent), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 3.3 billion (up 2 percent) and Microsoft Sites with 2.8 billion (up 2 percent).

comScore Total Core Search Query Report December 2011 vs. November 2011 Total U.S. – Home & Work Locations Source: comScore qSearch
Core Search Entity	Total Core Search Queries (MM)
Core Search Entity	Nov-11	Dec-11	Percent Change
Total Core Search	19,906	20,525	3%
Google Sites	13,074	13,560	4%
Yahoo! Sites	3,245	3,318	2%
Microsoft Sites	2,785	2,829	2%
Ask Network	516	531	3%
AOL, Inc.	286	287	0%

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In December, 68.1 percent of searches carried organic search results from Google (vs. 67.6 percent in November) while 26.5 percent of searches were powered by Bing (vs. 26.7 percent in November).

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.