Search Surges

U.S. users posted a new record for the number of search queries performed on the top engines in November, with over 8.1 billion discrete searches. That’s roughly 48 monthly searches per person on average and 12 more monthly searches than the 36 per month that Compete estimated for November 2006.

Personally, I think I do something more like 48 searches an hour!

Google Dominates Search Even More This Year

Google accounted for 65.10 percent of all U.S. searches in the four weeks ending December 1, 2007, according to Hitwise. Yahoo! Search, MSN Search and Ask.com each received 21.21, 7.09 and 4.63 percent respectively. The remaining 46 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.96 percent of U.S. searches.

As you might expect, search engines also continue to be the primary way Internet users navigate to key industry categories. Comparing November 2007 to November 2006, the travel, entertainment and business and finance categories showed double digit increases in their share of traffic coming directly from search engines.