comScore Releases January 2013 U.S. Search Engine Rankings

RESTON, VA – 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 67 percent of search queries conducted, followed by Microsoft Sites with 16.5 percent.

U.S. Explicit Core Search

Google Sites led the U.S. explicit core search market in January with 67 percent market share (up 0.3 percentage points), followed by Microsoft Sites with 16.5 percent (up 0.2 percentage points) and Yahoo! Sites with 12.1 percent. Ask Network accounted for 2.8 percent of explicit core searches, followed by AOL, Inc. with 1.7 percent.

comScore Explicit Core Search Share Report*
January 2013 vs. December 2012 
Total U.S. – Home & Work Locations
Source: comScore qSearch
Core Search Entity Explicit Core Search Share (%)
Dec-12 Jan-13 Point Change
Total Explicit Core Search 100.0% 100.0% N/A
Google Sites 66.7% 67.0% 0.3
Microsoft Sites 16.3% 16.5% 0.2
Yahoo! Sites 12.2% 12.1% -0.1
Ask Network 3.0% 2.8% -0.2
AOL, Inc. 1.8% 1.7% -0.1

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

Nearly 19.5 billion explicit core searches were conducted in January (up 11 percent), with Google Sites ranking first with 13.1 billion (up 11 percent). Microsoft Sites ranked second with 3.2 billion searches (up 12 percent), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2.3 billion (up 9 percent), Ask Network with 536 million and AOL, Inc. with 331 million (up 7 percent).

comScore Explicit Core Search Query Report
January 2013 vs. December 2012 
Total U.S. – Home & Work Locations
Source: comScore qSearch
Core Search Entity Explicit Core Search Queries (MM)
Dec-12 Jan-13 Percent Change
Total Explicit Core Search 17,628 19,484 11%
Google Sites 11,763 13,060 11%
Microsoft Sites 2,867 3,208 12%
Yahoo! Sites 2,154 2,348 9%
Ask Network 534 536 0%
AOL, Inc. 310 331 7%

“Powered By” Reporting

In January, 69.3 percent of searches carried organic search results from Google (up 0.2 percentage points), while 25.6 percent of searches were powered by Bing.

About comScore
comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in digital measurement and analytics, delivering insights on web, mobile and TV consumer behavior that enable clients to maximize the value of their digital investments. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com/companyinfo.