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comScore Releases January 2011 U.S. Search Engine Rankings

RESTON, Va., Feb. 11, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- 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 January with 65.6 percent of searches conducted.

U.S. Explicit Core Search

Google Sites led the U.S. explicit core search market in January with 65.6 percent market share, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 16.1 percent and Microsoft sites with 13.1 percent (up 1.1 percentage points). Ask Network accounted for 3.4 percent of explicit core searches, followed by AOL LLC Network with 1.7 percent.

    comScore Explicit Core Search Share Report*
    January 2011 vs. December 2010
    Total U.S. - Home/Work/University Locations
    Source: comScore qSearch

                             Explicit Core Search Share
    Core Search Entity                   (%)
                                                  Point
                           Dec-10     Jan-11     Change
    Total Explicit Core
     Search                  100.0%     100.0%       N/A
    Google Sites              66.6%      65.6%      -1.0
    Yahoo! Sites              16.0%      16.1%       0.1
    Microsoft Sites           12.0%      13.1%       1.1
    Ask Network                3.5%       3.4%      -0.1
    AOL LLC Network            1.9%       1.7%      -0.2

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

Nearly 17 billion explicit core searches were conducted in January. Google Sites ranked first with 11.1 billion searches. Yahoo! Sites came in second with 2.7 billion, followed by Microsoft Sites with nearly 2.2 billion (up 13 percent), Ask Network with 576 million and AOL LLC Network with 296 million.

    comScore Explicit Core Search Query Report
    January 2011 vs. December 2010
    Total U.S. - Home/Work/University Locations
    Source: comScore qSearch

                            Explicit Core Search Queries
    Core Search Entity                  (MM)
                                                Percent
                           Dec-10     Jan-11    Change
    Total Explicit Core
     Search                 16,443     16,950         3%
    Google Sites            10,957     11,121         1%
    Yahoo! Sites             2,631      2,729         4%
    Microsoft Sites          1,967      2,229        13%
    Ask Network                575        576         0%
    -----------                ---        ---       ---
    AOL LLC Network            312        296        -5%
    ---------------            ---        ---       ---

U.S. Total Core Search

Google Sites accounted for 64.6 percent of total core search queries conducted, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 17.9 percent and Microsoft Sites with 12.8 percent (up 0.8 percentage points). Ask Network comprised 3.1 percent of total search queries, followed by AOL LLC Network with 1.6 percent.

    comScore Total Core Search Share Report*
    January 2011 vs. December 2010
    Total U.S. - Home/Work/University Locations
    Source: comScore qSearch

    Core Search Entity      Total Core Search Share (%)
                                                  Point
                           Dec-10     Jan-11     Change
    Total Core Search        100.0%     100.0%       N/A
    Google Sites              64.3%      64.6%       0.3
    Yahoo! Sites              18.8%      17.9%      -0.9
    Microsoft Sites           12.0%      12.8%       0.8
    Ask Network                3.2%       3.1%      -0.1
    AOL LLC Network            1.7%       1.6%      -0.1

    * "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 18.6 billion total core search queries in January. Google Sites ranked first with 12 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 3.3 billion and Microsoft Sites with 2.4 billion.

    comScore Total Core Search Query Report
    January 2011 vs. December 2010
    Total U.S. - Home/Work/University Locations
    Source: comScore qSearch

                             Total Core Search Queries
    Core Search Entity                  (MM)
                                                Percent
                           Dec-10     Jan-11    Change
    Total Core Search       18,220     18,555         2%
    Google Sites            11,716     11,987         2%
    Yahoo! Sites             3,434      3,313        -4%
    Microsoft Sites          2,183      2,383         9%
    Ask Network                575        576         0%
    -----------                ---        ---       ---
    AOL LLC Network            312        296        -5%
    ---------------            ---        ---       ---

"Powered By" Reporting

In order to accurately represent the continued evolution of the search landscape, comScore is providing insight into the share of algorithmic explicit searches that are powered by Google and Bing, and branded as such to the consumer. Google's "powered by" share is composed of searches conducted at Google entities, as well as branded searches at AOL and Ask. Bing's "powered by" share is composed of searches conducted at Microsoft entities as well as branded Yahoo! entities.

In January, 68.2 percent of searches carried organic search results from Google, while 25.6 percent of searches were powered by Bing organic results.

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.

SOURCE comScore, Inc.