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Bing Growing at 25 Percent Rate in June 2009

Google at 74 percent of U.S. searches;

Length of eight-plus keyword searches increase 16 percent

 

New York, NY - July 9, 2009 - Hitwise, an Experian company, announced today that Google accounted for 74.04 percent of all U.S. searches conducted in the four weeks ending June 27, 2009. Yahoo! Search, Bing and Ask.com received 16.19 percent, 5.25 percent and 3.15 percent, respectively. The remaining 48 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.36 percent of U.S. searche

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

Domain

June 2008

May 2009

June 2009

Year-over-year percent change

www.google.com

69.17%

73.66%

74.04%

7%

search.yahoo.com

19.62%

15.55%

16.19%

-17%

bing.com*

5.46%

5.64%

5.25%

-4%

www.ask.com

4.05%

3.81%

3.15%

-22%

Note: Data is based on four-week rolling periods (ending June 27, 2009; May 30, 2009; and June 28, 2008) from the Hitwise sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users.

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

Source: Hitwise, an Experian company

Bing's growth accelerates
Looking at the weekly percentage of U.S. searches for Bing, the search engine has grown at an average weekly rate of 25 percent for the month of June 2009. Adding in Live.com and MSN Search along with Bing, the combined search engines have grown at an average of 16 percent during June 2009. Bing grew faster than the three other prominent search engines for the month.

Percentage of U.S. searches among Bing

Week ending

Bing

Bing combined*

June 6, 2009

3.43%

4.30%

June 13, 2009

4.57%

4.59%

June 20, 2009

5.35%

5.39%

June 27, 2009

6.63%

6.71%

Average weekly percentage growth

25%

16%

Note: Data is based on four-week rolling periods (ending June 27, 2009; May 30, 2009; and June 28, 2008) from the Hitwise sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users.

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

Source: Hitwise, an Experian company

Longer search queries becoming more popular
The length of search queries has increased over the past year. Longer search queries, averaging searches of five to more than eight words in length, increased 8 percent between June 2008 and June 2009. Searches of eight or more words increased 16 percent. The same time period showed that shorter search queries - those averaging one to four words long - have decreased 2 percent. Searches of two words comprised the majority of searches, amounting to 22.88 percent of all queries.

Percentage of U.S. clicks by number of keywords

Subject

June 2008

May 2009

June 2009

Year-over-year percent change

One word

21.22%

21.36%

20.88%

-2%

Two words

24.17%

22.24%

22.02%

-9%

Three words

21.49%

21.49%

21.64%

1%

Four words

15%

15.01%

15.30%

5%

Five words

8.44%

8.82%

8.98%

6%

Six words

4.55%

4.77%

4.84%

6%

Seven words

2.41%

2.61%

2.62%

9%

Eight or more words

3.20%

3.69%

3.72%

16%

Note: Data is based on four-week rolling periods (ending June 27, 2009; May 30, 2009; and June 28, 2008) from the Hitwise sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users.

Source: Hitwise, an Experian company

 

Google an increasing source of traffic to key U.S. industries

Search engines continue to be the primary way Internet users navigate to key industry categories. Comparing June 2009 with June 2008, Business and Finance, Entertainment, Online Video and Sports 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 - June 2009

Category

Percentage of category traffic from search engines - June 2009

Percent change in share of traffic from search engines - June2008-June 2009

Percentage of category traffic from Google - June2009

Percent change in share of traffic from Google - June2008-June2009

Automotive

28.40%

7%

21.03%

17%

Business and Finance

21.01%

14%

15.63%

28%

Entertainment

26.88%

12%

19.53%

23%

Health and Medical

46.44%

2%

34.06%

10%

News and Media

21.27%

0%

15.66%

8%

Online Video**

36.08%

21%

27.29%

31%

Shopping and Classifieds

23.84%

-6%

17.67%

3%

Social Networking**

17.77%

7%

12.45%

20%

Sports

16.07%

19%

12.16%

32%

Travel

36.94%

7%

28.79%

18%

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.