Is Search at a Tipping Point?

Comscore released its monthly comScore qSearch analysis of the U.S. search marketplace today. Americans conducted 11.7 billion core searches and Google extended its lead by 1.1 percentage points, to 63 percent of the searches conducted (up from 61.9 percent in July). However, the total number of searches was virtually unchanged from July.

AOL (4.3%) and ASK (4.5%) made modest gains (+0.1 and 0.3 respectively) while both Yahoo (19.6%) and Microsoft (8.3%) slipped slightly. In the comScore August 2008 extended search analysis of the top properties where search activity is observed (which includes partner searches and cross-channel searches), Google sites led with 10.2 billion searches, a 2-percent increase versus July. Yahoo! sites ranked second with 2.4 billion searches, followed by Microsoft sites with 1 billion and AOL LLC with 839 million.