Search: Google still leading, Microsoft began

The market research institute comScore recently released a benchmark report on the market for Internet search in December 2009. It covers both conventional search engines and other online services offering research, such as portals or sites of e-commerce.

It is clear that once again Google has clearly dominated the industry with 87.8 billion queries conducted in the world, representing a market share of 66.8% and an annual growth of 58%. Yahoo! remains confined to the second place ranking with 9.4 billion queries (13%), followed by Baidu China with 8.5 billion queries (7%).

Microsoft last December was the fourth player in research on the net, with 4.1 billion queries on its engines and an annual growth of no less than 70%, launch Bing forces. Finally, note the rapid growth (+91% yoy) of Russian search engine Yandex, which now has 1.9 billion queries, ahead Facebook, Ask or Alibaba.

comScore indicates that the last country where research on the Internet is more developed are not surprised the United States, with 22.7 billion in total requests made in December 2009, China (13.2 billion queries) and Japan (9.1 billion). France appears only the sixth place ranking with 5.42 billion queries, a figure up still 61% compared to December 2008.