The World Searches

A new global study shows how, and with whom, the world searched online during August.

A new global study into Internet searches has revealed some pretty interesting facts, along with one that will surprise nobody.   comScore.com released the first major study into search activity around the world. Undertaken during August, it revealed that 61 billion searches were undertaken by some 750 million people – a figure that represents about 95% of Internet users aged 15 or older. That averages to 80 searches per user during the month.   The leader in all this activity was the Asian-Pacific region, where 258 million users conducted 20.3 billion searches. That was followed by Europe, with 210 million users having 18 billion searches. North America lagged third – 206 million and 16 billion, respectively. The greatest search activity came from Latin America, where the average was 95 searches per person during the month.   The Middle East and North Africa lagged well behind the rest of the world, indicating that Internet use there still has a long way to go to catch up.   So what was the fact that surprised nobody? That Google easily dominates the world of search. With 31 billion searches on Google itself and another five billion on YouTube, it was far ahead of the pack. Yahoo was a very distant second, managing just 8.5 billion searches, followed by the Chinese search engine Baidu.com. That was followed by Microsoft, then the Korean NHN Corporation, and its Naver.com.   “Seeing Asian search engines like China’s Baidu.com and Korea’s NHN ranked alongside Google and Yahoo! underscores the fact that search has become a truly global phenomenon. The continued development of search in international markets will undoubtedly present compelling opportunities for savvy marketers on a global scale,” said Bob Ivins, executive vice president of International Markets at comScore.