comScore Networks today released its monthly qSearch analysis of activity across competitive search engines.
In January 2006, Google reinforced its status as market leader of the U.S. search market with a 41.4% share of all searches submitted, up more than 6 share points versus year ago. Yahoo! maintained the #2 spot in the ranking with 28.7% share of all searches, while MSN ranked third capturing 13.7% of all online searches.
Additional findings from the January monthly analysis show Americans conducted 5.48 billion searches online in January, up 11% from the previous year. While this growth is still strong, it reflects a substantial slowdown from the 42 percent surge seen in January 2005 versus the previous year.
Google Sites once again led the group with 2.3 billion searches followed by Yahoo! Sites (1.6 billion searches), MSN-Microsoft Sites (752.5 million searches), Time Warner (432.6 million searches), and Ask Jeeves (307.3 million searches).
Google Sites also won top honors in share of tool bar search, capturing 49.5% of all tool bar searches, while Yahoo! Sites secured 45.5%.
Dr. Magid Abraham, President and CEO of comScore Networks, commented,
"This report provides evidence that the growth in the U.S. Search market is slowing. The good news for search companies is that the utilization of search queries for advertising purposes continues to increase. In December 2005, 57.2 percent of search query results included a sponsored advertisement, up from 49.1 percent a year earlier. Additionally, the international search market continues to be strong, with a growth rate of 34 percent based on comScore's December 2005 international data. As a result, search revenue growth will significantly outpace search query growth. At the same time the slowdown in the overall growth rates is unmistakable."
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