Comscore Releases December 2012 U.S. Search Engine Rankings

RESTON, VA, January 11, 2013 – Comscore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released its monthly Comscore qSearch analysis of the U.S. search marketplace. Google Sites led the explicit core search market in December with 66.7 percent of search queries conducted.

U.S. Explicit Core Search

Google Sites led the U.S. explicit core search market in December with 66.7 percent market share, followed by Microsoft Sites with 16.3 percent (up 0.1 percentage points) and Yahoo! Sites with 12.2 percent (up 0.1 percentage points). Ask Network accounted for 3 percent of explicit core searches, followed by AOL, Inc. with 1.8 percent (up 0.1 percentage points).

Comscore Explicit Core Search Share Report*
December 2012 vs. November 2012
Total U.S. – Home & Work Locations
Source: Comscore qSearch

Core Search Entity

Explicit Core Search Share (%)

Nov-12

Dec-12

Point Change

Total Explicit Core Search

100.0%

100.0%

N/A

Google Sites

67.0%

66.7%

-0.3

Microsoft Sites

16.2%

16.3%

0.1

Yahoo! Sites

12.1%

12.2%

0.1

Ask Network

3.0%

3.0%

0.0

AOL, Inc.

1.7%

1.8%

0.1

*“Explicit Core Search” excludes contextually driven searches that do not
reflect specific user intent to interact with the search results.

More than 17.6 billion explicit core searches were conducted in December (up 4 percent), with Google Sites ranking first with 11.8 billion (up 4 percent). Microsoft Sites ranked second with 2.9 billion searches (up 5 percent), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2.2 billion (up 5 percent), Ask Network with 534 million (up 5 percent) and AOL, Inc. with 310 million (up 4 percent).

Comscore Explicit Core Search Query Report
December 2012 vs. November 2012
Total U.S. – Home & Work Locations
Source: Comscore qSearch

Core Search Entity

Explicit Core Search Queries (MM)

Nov-12

Dec-12

Percent Change

Total Explicit Core Search

16,957

17,628

4%

Google Sites

11,359

11,763

4%

Microsoft Sites

2,741

2,867

5%

Yahoo! Sites

2,054

2,154

5%

Ask Network

506

534

5%

AOL, Inc.

297

310

4%

“Powered By” Reporting

In December, 69.1 percent of searches carried organic search results from Google, while 25.6 percent of searches were powered by Bing (up 0.2 percentage points).

About Comscore
Comscore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world and preferred source of digital business analytics. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com/companyinfo.

Contact:
Adam Lella
Comscore, Inc.
+1 (312) 775-6474
press@comscore.com