How To Split An Atom

comScore has released a new report, showing the search volume that has been split between the major search engines. While the numbers themselves aren’t particular important, the statistics behind them are food for thought.

comScore

comScore is a leader in market research in the online space, they track user data through a network of host computers which are compensated for participating in their servers by receiving free software and chances for prizes. As a participant in comScore’s program, all of your internet behavior is tracked and sent back to their servers. Using this information, they produce a profile of various aspects of how the web is developing. In this case, we are dealing with search results.

Highlights

From the report,

• Americans conducted 8.0 billion searches online in June, up 6 percent versus May and up 26 percent versus June 2006.
• Google Sites led the pack with 4.0 billion search queries performed, followed by Yahoo Sites (2.0 billion), Microsoft Sites (1.1 billion), Ask Network (403 million), and Time Warner Network (341 million). Despite declining in search market share in June, both Google Sites and Yahoo! Sites enjoyed increases in search query volume.
• Microsoft Sites experienced a significant increase in search query volume (up 36 percent) and search market share (up 2.9 share points) in June, due in large part to Live Search Club, a program launched by Microsoft in late May to engage and reward users of Live Search.

Web 2.0 Roundup

What is interesting to note is that all of the major search engines lost traffic volume in the last month, except for Microsoft’s offering. I wonder how much of that search traffic is being diverted to the new crop of search engines like Mahalo and Powerset, or how much is going to specialized search brokers like Spock.