Daily Research News Online no. 3200 - New Search Engine Usage Measure

New Search Engine Usage Measure

June 15 2004

comScore Networks has announced the launch of qSearch Europe, which provides insight into usage of the top search engines and portals, based on actual search queries. The new service adds figures for the UK, France and Germany to the existing measures for Canada and the US, and initial results show an interesting comparison.

According to comScore, initial figures suggest that the UK has 'a more developed online search market' than any of the other 4 countries covered, with UK search engine users in April conducting an average of 41.8 searches:

Search Engine Usage April 2004
	Searches per Search Engine User
United Kingdom	41.8
Canada	39.9
United States	35.2
France	34.0
Germany	31.2
Source: comScore qSearch

The major Internet portals have a significant opportunity to convert existing visitors to search engine users, according to comScore analysis. For example, nearly 80% of UK Internet users visited MSN-Microsoft sites in April, but just 34% of search engine users conducted a search at an MSN search engine during the month. With the exception of the US, where Yahoo!is the leader, Google had more users than any of the other search engines in each country.

Internet Reach* and Search Engine Penetration**

	Canada		France
	Internet Reach	Search Penetration	Internet Reach	Search Penetration
Google	74%	65%	53%	65%
MSN-Microsoft	96%	46%	72%	27%
Time Warner (AOL)	57%	7%	39%	24%
Yahoo!	79%	41%	43%	23%

	United Kingdom		United States
	Internet Reach	Search Penetration	Internet Reach	Search Penetration
Google	62%	69%	43%	47%
MSN-Microsoft	79%	34%	71%	40%
Time Warner (AOL)	45%	12%	72%	24%
Yahoo!	59%	34%	73%	51%
Source: comScore qSearch April 2004

*Internet Reach is defined as the percentage of total Internet users that visited a given property at least once during the month.

**Search penetration is defined as the percentage of total search engine users who conducted at least one search at a given property.

In terms of the volume of searches conducted, Google is no.1 in all of the countries analysed, although its lead is much slimmer in the US. It accounted for more than 70% of searches conducted at the top three engines by users in Canada, France and the UK, versus 44% in the USA.

Share of Searches Among Top Three Engines April 2004
	Canada	France	UK	US
Google Sites	70%	80%	77%	44%
Yahoo! Sites	17%	10%	14%	37%
MSN-Microsoft Sites	13%	10%	9%	19%
Source: comScore qSearch

Google's share advantage in Europe and Canada is a result of both the number of users who search at Google (i.e. search penetration) and the number of searches conducted by these users. For example, the average Google user in the UK conducted approximately 39 searches at the engine, compared to 15 searches by the average Yahoo! user, and just 9 searches by the average MSN user.

'We're delighted to launch qSearch Europe as part of our ongoing commitment to provide the European media and advertising industries with the most innovative and accurate research and analysis tools', said Peter Daboll, president and CEO of comScore Media Metrix.

comScore's web site is at www.comscore.com

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.