Search Engines Gain in Daily Usage
Search continues to show big gains among US users. comScore data comparing September 2004 to September 2005 showed that the average daily use of search engines was up from 49.3 million users to 60.7 million. Separately, the Pew Internet & American Life Project said that in its most recent survey, the daily use of search engines had grown to 41 percent of the online population (59 million users). That’s up from 30 percent in June 2004.
The Pew data are drawn from telephone surveys, while the comScore data are from online panels.
This most recent set of comScore search market-share data reflect the following:
* Google —89.8 million uniques
* Yahoo! Search—68 million uniques
* MSN Search—49.7 million uniques
* Ask Jeeves—43.7 million uniques
* AOL Search—36.1 million uniques
According to Pew, e-mail is still the most used online application—77 percent do so daily. But search is gaining.
Here’s an interesting data point: comScore says that users spend an average of 24 minutes per day with e-mail vs about 4 minutes for search. (Yahoo! Mail and Gmail are thus important ad inventory). Another striking thing is how Ask is not far off MSN in the comScore data.
This increasing usage of search engines then will mean increased PPClick revenues among the major engines and it also shows that search has become a kind of universal consumer doorway and distribution mechanism that all online advertisers—whether directly or by proxy—must reach.
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Greg Sterling, Local Search and Convergence Columnist – Greg Sterling is managing editor of The Kelsey Group who also writes the Local Media Journal Blog.
