Just in case you’ve been living under a rock, Google is the first port of call for most users of the internet looking for a jump off point, but a recent survey by comScore shows just how dominant a force it is.
Of the 61 billion online searches carried out worldwide in August of this year, more than half, at 37 billion, were done through Google, trouncing the competition.
Yahoo!, once a leader in search engine sites, now has traffic of about 8.5 billion for August, although it overshadowed Microsoft sites which only accounted for 2.2 billion of all searches in the same period.
Interestingly the video-sharing site YouTube had five billion search requests this past August, putting well ahead of Microsoft.
The study further found that over 750 million people globally constituting 95pc of total internet users, racked up the 61 billion search requests, averaging out at over 80 searches per user.
While Google dominates in market coverage its user base is also growing at a much higher rate than other engines. Year to year, Google usage grew by 39.8pc in comparison with Yahoo!’s 8.9pc
However MSN usage although low, grew greatly, by 68.9pc on last year.
Ask.com, the overhauled askjeeves.com, went through a major facelift in the last year, adding more search-friendly abilities and personalisation. Despite this, its user base did not grow at all, catching a mere 136,853 search requests in the month of August.
By Marie Boran
