comScore Media Metrix Search Engine Ratings

The comScore Media Metrix qSearch service measures search-specific traffic on the internet. qSearch data is gathered by monitoring the web activities of 1.5 million English-speakers worldwide (1 million in the United States) via proxy metering.

Proxy metering allows comScore to see exactly how those within its panel have surfed the web. From this data, the company then extracts activity that's considered to be specifically search-related.

Below are figures about searching from qSearch figures released to the public.

Share Of Searches: July 2005

The pie chart below shows the percentage of searches done by US web surfers in July 2005 that were performed at a particular web site or a network of web sites:

The qSearch figures are search-specific but not necessarily web-search specific. For example, a search performed at Yahoo Sports would count toward Yahoo's overall total. That's important to understand.

For example, "channel" driven searches were reported by comScore as making up 58 percent of Yahoo's total searches in January 2003. The same could be true of other non-pure search sites, such as MSN and AOL.

Also note that some companies own more than one web site. This means searches at different sites may be combined into one overall figure for the company's entire network. Here's a rundown with more details about this:

• Google: Shows searches at any Google-owned web site such as Google.com or Google Image Search. May show searches at some Google partners that show Google's domain in the URLs of their search results, as happens with Go.com.
   
• Yahoo: Shows searches at any Yahoo-owned web site including those of AltaVista, AllTheWeb and Overture.
   
• MSN: Shows searches at any MSN-operated web site such as MSN Search.
   
• AOL: Shows searches at any Time Warner-owned web site, including AOL Search and Netscape Search.
   
• Ask: Shows searches at Ask Jeeves and Ask Jeeves-owned Teoma and apparently at any site within the Ask Jeeves-owned Excite Network, including Excite, iWon, MyWay.com and My Web Search. Previously, comScore broke these out separately
   
• Infospace: Shows searches at Infospace-owned web sites such at Dogpile but might not include searches at Excite, where Infospace actually owns the search box and searches at that site.
   
• Other: Shows searches that occur at other search sites.

Share Of Searches Trend

The chart below shows how the share of searches has changed over the past few months. Note that comScore only releases data publicly sporadically, so not all months nor all search engines are shown. For more regular reports of data, see the NetRatings and Hitwise pages within the site.

Search Providers

The illustrations above shows the share of searches received by particular search engines that share the same brand name or network. However, some companies run multiple search engines under different brands. In addition, not all search engines use their own technology. Instead, they may outsource to others for search listings, both editorial and paid. The chart below shows the share of searches on a search provider basis.

Here's a breakdown on how Search Engine Watch has compiled these figures from those in the chart above.

• Google: Editorial is combined share of searches at Google and AOL, while paid includes searches at Ask. Ask does have its own self-serve paid listings program, but this was not active in July 2005.
   
• Yahoo: Editorial is share of searches at Yahoo, while paid includes searches at MSN. MSN does have a relatively small paid listing program of its own, one due to greatly expand toward the end of 2005.
   
• MSN: Editorial is share of searches at MSN, which uses its own technology. Paid is covered by Yahoo, as explained above.
   
• Ask: Editorial is share of searches at Ask. Note that some at My Web Search, other search engines beyond Ask are offered. At Excite, meta search results that include Google and others are shown. There's no way to separate out non-Ask powered results from the Ask figure provided by comScore.
   
• Other: Share of searches from other sites that use their own technology or editorial processes. May include also some share that belongs to the other provider categories already named. However, there isn't enough detail to properly break out these shares.