Comscore Releases December 2011 U.S. Search Engine Rankings

RESTON, VA, January 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 December with 65.9 percent of search queries conducted.

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 (%)

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)

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 (%)

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)

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%

“Powered By” Reporting

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.

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