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Oct. 11, 2007

Yesterday, comScore has released its first report of global search activity.

The data is based on numbers from its Q-Search v. 2.0 service. comScore's research reveals that about 95 percent of the global Internet audience performed over sixty billion searches in August 2007.

The numbers represent an average of about 82 searches per Internet user, a number that the research firm considers important.

Google's websites ranked as the top worldwide search properties in August, with over 37 billion searches conducted.

Overall, comScore's numbers demonstrate that the Asia-Pacific region, which includes large markets such as China, Japan and India, saw approximately 258.1 million unique Web users conduct more than 20.92 billion searches.

For its part, Europe reported the second-most searchers at 210 million users performing a little under 18.2 billion searches, followed closely by North America, with 206 million users that performed over 15.96 billion searches.

comScore's survey suggests that the Latin American region demonstrated the heaviest search activity per person, with more than 95 searches per Internet user in August.

As expected, the search market in the Middle East/East African region is the most underdeveloped, with the fewest searches, or less than 30.1 million Internet users in the whole month.

Bob Ivins, executive v.p. of International Markets at comScore said “our ability to look at search on a global, regional and country level provides good insight into the evolving search landscape that wasn't available less than a year ago."

Ivins added "with today's large volume of search activity occurring around the world, search continues to present an abundance of marketing opportunities to Internet advertisers on both a global and local scale.”

It is interesting to note that, of Google's total searches, about 31 billion occurred at the search engine itself, while about 5 billion occurred at YouTube.com.

For its part, Yahoo ranked second with about 8.5 billion searches, while Baidu.com, a Chinese language search engine, followed in third place with a little over 3.2 billion searches.

Microsoft Sites ranked in fourth place globally, while Korea’s NHN Corporation, which owns Naver.com, ranked fifth with less than 2.04 billion searches.

Ivins added “seeing an Asian search engine like China’s Baidu.com ranking alongside Google and Yahoo underscores the fact that search has become a truly global phenomenon. The continued development of search in international markets will undoubtedly present compelling opportunities for savvy Internet marketers on a global scale.”

Footnotes:
1) Search properties based on top 50 properties worldwide where search activity is observed.
2) Numbers exclude traffic from public computers such as Internet cafés or from mobile phones.

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Source: comScore