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Google Nears 72 Percent of U.S. Searches in October 2008

Search leader up 14 percent year over year;
MSN/Live Search increases for fourth straight month


New York, N.Y., Dec. 11, 2008
- Hitwise®, an Experian company, announced today that Google accounted for 71.97 percent of all U.S. searches conducted in the four weeks ending Nov. 29, 2008. Yahoo! Search, MSN Search and Ask.com received 17.70 percent, 5.45 percent and 3.35 percent, respectively. The remaining 43 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.53 percent of U.S. searches.

Percentage of U.S. searches among leading search engine providers
 
Domain November 2007 October 2008 November 2008
www.google.com 63.15% 71.70% 71.97%
search.yahoo.com 21.62% 17.74% 17.70%
search.msn.com 9.80%* 5.40%* 5.45%*
www.ask.com 3.72% 3.53% 3.35%


Note: Data is based on four-week rolling periods (ending Nov. 29, 2008; Nov. 1, 2008; and Nov. 24, 2007) from the Hitwise sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users.
*Includes executed searches on Live.com and MSN Search but does not include searches on Club.Live.com.

Source: Hitwise, an Experian company


Google a greater source of traffic to key U.S. industries

Search engines continue to be the primary way Internet users navigate to key industry categories. Comparing November 2008 with November 2007, Business and Finance, Sports, Online Video and Social Networking categories showed double-digit increases in their share of traffic coming directly from search engines.

U.S. category upstream traffic from search engines and Google - November 2008
 
Category Percentage of category traffic from search engines - November 2008 Percent change in share of traffic from search engines - November 2007-November 2008 Percentage of category traffic from Google - November 2008 Percent change in share of traffic from Google - November 2007-November 2008
Health and Medical 45.75% 2% 32.69% 12%
Travel 35.91% 9% 26.77% 23%
Shopping and Classifieds 25.61% 0% 18.12% 12%
News and Media 21.42% -2% 15.46% 11%
Entertainment 24.39% 8% 16.88% 23%
Business and Finance 19.23% 13% 13.47% 28%
Sports 12.57% 19% 8.91% 33%
Online Video** 33.22% 22% 24.65% 43%
Social Networking** 18.41% 22% 12.27% 45%


All figures are based on U.S. data from the Hitwise sample of 10 million Internet users.
**Denotes a custom category

Source: Hitwise, an Experian company


About Hitwise

Hitwise, an Experian company, is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Only Hitwise provides its 1,500 clients around the world with daily insights on how their customers interact with a broad range of competitive Web sites and how their competitors use different tactics to attract online customers.

Since 1997, Hitwise has pioneered a unique, network-based approach to Internet measurement. Through relationships with ISPs around the world, Hitwise's patented methodology anonymously captures the online usage, search and conversion behavior of 25 million Internet users. This unprecedented volume of Internet usage data is seamlessly integrated into an easy-to-use, Web-based service, designed to help marketers better plan, implement and report on a range of online marketing programs.

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

For up-to-date analysis of online trends, please visit the Hitwise Intelligence - Analyst Weblogs and the Hitwise Data Center.