Comscore Releases August 2012 U.S. Search Engine Rankings

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 Locations
Source: 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 Report
August 2012
Total U.S. – Home & Work Locations
Source: Comscore qSearch

Core Search Entity

Explicit Core Search Queries (MM)

Aug-12

Total Explicit Core Search

17,046

Google Sites

11,317

Microsoft Sites

2,710

Yahoo! Sites

2,177

Ask Network

550

AOL, Inc.

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.

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