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Google Receives 71 Percent of Searches in November 2009

Ask.com sees 1 percent increase


New York, N.Y., Dec. 9, 2009
- Experian® Hitwise® announced today that Google accounted for 71.57 percent of all U.S. searches conducted in the four weeks ending Nov. 28, 2009. Yahoo! Search, Bing and Ask.com received 15.39 percent, 9.34 percent and 2.65 percent, respectively. The remaining 52 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.07 percent of U.S. searches.

Percentage of U.S. searches among leading search engine provider

Domain

October 2009

November 2009

Month-over-month percentage change

www.google.com

70.60%

71.57%

1%

search.yahoo.com

16.14%

15.39%

-5%

www.bing.com

9.57%

9.34%

-2%

www.ask.com

2.62%

2.65%

1%

Note: Data is based on four-week rolling periods (ending Nov. 28, 2009, and Oct. 31, 2009) from the Hitwise sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users.

*This includes executed searches on Bing.com, Live.com and MSN Search but does not include searches on Club.Live.com.

Source: Experian Hitwise

Longer searches are flat this past month

Longer search queries, averaging searches of five to more than eight words in length, were flat between October and September 2009. Searches of eight or more words increased 1 percent. The same time period showed that shorter search queries - those averaging one to four words long - were flat from month to month. Searches of one word comprised the majority of searches, amounting to 24.13 percent of all queries.

Percentage of U.S. clicks by number of keywords

Subject

October 2009

November 2009

Month-over-month percentage change

One word

24.03%

24.13%

0%

Two words

23.13%

23.14%

0%

Three words

20.53%

20.37%

-1%

Four words

13.83%

13.84%

0%

Five words

8.13%

8.13%

0%

Six words

4.42%

4.43%

0%

Seven words

2.43%

2.43%

0%

Eight or more words

3.49%

3.54%

1%

Note: Data is based on four-week rolling periods (ending Nov. 28, 2009, and Oct. 31, 2009) from the Hitwise sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users.

Source: Experian Hitwise

Google is greatest source of traffic to key U.S. industries; Bing sees growth to verticals
Search engines continue to be the primary way Internet users navigate to key industry categories. Comparing November 2009 with November 2008, Automotive, Business and Finance, Entertainment, News and Media, and Sports categories showed double-digit increases in their share of traffic coming directly from search engines.

Google was sending the most visits to the four categories below among the top three search engines. Google's percentage of upstream traffic grew for the Automotive, Shopping and Travel categories. Bing saw double-digit growth among all four categories as seen in the table below.

Percentage of U.S. upstream traffic from search engines among verticals

 

Google

Yahoo! Search

Bing

Domain

Nov-08

Nov-09

YoY % Change

Nov-08

Nov-09

YoY % Change

Nov-08

Nov-09

YoY % Change

Automotive

18.38%

21.10%

15%

4.26%

3.96%

-7%

1.26%

2.34%

86%

Health

32.69%

31.62%

-3%

6.31%

5.05%

-20%

1.78%

3.40%

91%

Shopping

18.12%

19.29%

6%

4.22%

3.91%

-7%

1.30%

2.26%

74%

Travel

26.77%

28.87%

8%

4.95%

4.26%

-14%

1.86%

2.86%

54%

Note: Data is based on monthly upstream traffic from the Hitwise sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users and does not include news searches.

*This includes executed searches on Bing.com, Live.com and MSN Search but does not include searches on Club.Live.com.

Source: Experian Hitwise

About Experian Hitwise
Experian Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Experian Hitwise gives marketers a competitive advantage by providing daily insights on how 25 million Internet users around the world interact with more than 1 million Web sites. This external view helps companies grow and protect their businesses by identifying threats and opportunities as they develop. Experian Hitwise has more than 1,500 clients across numerous sectors, including financial services, media, travel and retail.

Experian Hitwise (FTS:EXPN), http://www.experianplc.com, operates in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada and Brazil. More information about Experian Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.com.

For up-to-date analysis of online trends, please visit the Hitwise Research Blog and Hitwise Data Center.

About Experian
Experian is the leading global information services company, providing data and analytical tools to clients in more than 65 countries. The company helps businesses to manage credit risk, prevent fraud, target marketing offers and automate decision making. Experian also helps individuals to check their credit report and credit score and protect against identity theft.

Experian plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange (EXPN) and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 index. Total revenue for the year ended March 31, 2009, was $3.9 billion. Experian employs approximately 15,000 people in 40 countries and has its corporate headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, with operational headquarters in Nottingham, UK; Costa Mesa, California; and São Paulo, Brazil. 

For more information, visit http://www.experianplc.com.

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