Comscore Releases September 2012 U.S. Search Engine Rankings

RESTON, VA, October 11, 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 September with 66.7 percent of search queries conducted.

U.S. Explicit Core Search
Google Sites led the U.S. explicit core search market in September with 66.7 percent market share (up 0.3 percentage points), followed by Microsoft Sites with 15.9 percent and Yahoo! Sites with 12.2 percent. Ask Network accounted for 3.5 percent of explicit core searches (up 0.3 percentage points), followed by AOL, Inc. with 1.8 percent (up 0.1 percentage points).

Comscore Explicit Core Search Share Report*
September 2012 vs. August 2012
Total U.S. – Home & Work Locations
Source: Comscore qSearch

Core Search Entity

Explicit Core Search Share (%)

Aug-12

Sep-12

Point Change

Total Explicit Core Search

100.0%

100.0%

N/A

Google Sites

66.4

66.7

0.3

Microsoft Sites

15.9

15.9

0.0

Yahoo! Sites

12.8

12.2

-0.6

Ask Network

3.2

3.5

0.3

AOL, Inc.

1.7

1.8

0.1

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

More than 16.3 billion explicit core searches were conducted in September, with Google Sites ranking first with 10.9 billion. Microsoft Sites ranked second with 2.6 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2 billion, Ask Network with 565 million (up 3 percent) and AOL, Inc. with 287 million.

Comscore Explicit Core Search Query Report
September 2012 vs. August 2012
Total U.S. – Home & Work Locations
Source: Comscore qSearch

Core Search Entity

Explicit Core Search Queries (MM)

Aug-12

Sep-12

Percent Change

Total Explicit Core Search

17,046

16,352

-4%

Google Sites

11,317

10,912

-4%

Microsoft Sites

2,710

2,597

-4%

Yahoo! Sites

2,177

1,990

-9%

Ask Network

550

565

3%

AOL, Inc.

292

287

-2%

“Powered By” Reporting
In September, 69.4 percent of searches carried organic search results from Google (up 0.6 percentage points), while 25.1 percent of searches were powered by Bing.

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.

Contact:
Adam Lella
Comscore, Inc.
+1 (312) 775-6474
press@comscore.com