comScore has released some new numbers for the global search market. The highlight of the findings is that the market draws over 100 billion searches per month.
To be more specific, over 113 billion searches were conducted in July. This is a whopping 41% increase from a year ago. Obviously, Google sites received the bulk of these searches.
Searches on Google sites represented 76.7 billion searches, and 67.5% market share globally. Yahoo sites came in 2nd with 8.9 billion searches (7.8% share), then Baidu with 8 billion searches (7% share).
“Most of the top search properties worldwide experienced significant growth in search query volume versus last year, with Russian search engine Yandex growing at the fastest rate (94 percent) among the top ten,” says comScore.
To me, one of the more interesting points of the data above is that Facebook cracked the top ten. It may not be surprising to everybody, considering that Facebook is rivaling Google these days in terms of unique users, but from the search standpoint, it is definitely worth noting.
Last month, Facebook launched its version of real-time search, by letting users search posts from “everybody”. Users can use this feature to find posts about what’s happening “right now,” just as with Twitter Search. Facebook has a lot more users than Twitter, however, which would account for why we are seeing Facebook in the top ten before Twitter, despite Twitter’s punctuality in that area of search.
