A new study from comScore has found that more than 750 million people age 15 and older – or 95% of the worldwide internet audience – conducted 61 billion searches worldwide in August, an average of more than 80 searches per searcher.
comScore says that its qSearch 2.0 service offers the first panoramic worldwide view of online search activity, providing granular, in-depth analysis of the search universe reported from the top 50 worldwide internet properties where search activity is observed.
The Asia-Pacific region, which includes large markets such as China, Japan and India, saw 258 million unique searchers conduct 20.3 billion searches.
Europe reported the second-most searchers (210 million) and searches (18 billion), followed by North America, with 206 million searchers and 16 billion searches.
The Latin American region demonstrated the heaviest search activity per person, with more than 95 searches per searcher in August. The search market in the Middle East-Africa region is the most underdeveloped thus far, with the fewest searchers (30 million), searches (2 billion), and searches per searcher (70).
| Worldwide Search by Region, Total World Age 15+, Home and Work Locations* |
| Total Internet – By Region |
Unique Searchers (000) |
Searches (MM) |
Searches Per Searcher |
| Worldwide |
754,459 |
61,036 |
80.9 |
| Asia-Pacific |
257,952 |
20,295 |
78.7 |
| Europe |
209,678 |
17,846 |
85.1 |
| North America |
206,278 |
15,976 |
77.4 |
| Latin America |
49,995 |
4,784 |
95.7 |
| Middle East – Africa |
30,556 |
2,134 |
69.8 |
| *Excludes traffic from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs. |
| Source: comScore qSearch 2.0 |
Google Sites ranked as the top worldwide search property in August with 37.1 billion searches conducted. Of that total number, 31 billion occurred at the Google search engine and 5 billion occurred at YouTube.com. Yahoo! Sites ranked second with 8.5 billion searches, while Baidu.com, a Chinese language search engine, followed in third place with more than 3.2 billion searches.
| Top 10 Search Properties Worldwide*, Total World Age 15+, Home and Work |
| Search Property |
Searches (MM) |
| Worldwide |
61,036 |
| Google Sites |
37,094 |
| Yahoo! Sites |
8,549 |
| Baidu.com Inc. |
3,253 |
| Microsoft Sites |
2,166 |
| NHN Corporation |
2,044 |
| eBay |
1,319 |
| Time Warner Network |
1,212 |
| Ask Network |
743 |
| Fox Interactive Media |
683 |
| Lycos, Inc. |
441 |
| * Search properties based on top 50 properties worldwide where search activity is observed. |
| ** Excludes traffic from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs. |
| Source: comScore qSearch 2.0 |
Recent research from Nielsen//NetRatings revealed that travel, communities and research websites receive the most click-throughs from search engines whilst research, travel destinations and government sites rely most on search for visitors (see UK Search Engine Click-Throughs Revealed)
E-consultancy recently forecast that spending on search engine marketing in the UK will grow 58% this year to £2.2 billion, with almost £2 billion of that coming from paid search (see UK Search Engine Marketing To Grow).
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